Quote:The United Arab Emirates' orbiter reaches Mars on Tuesday, followed less than 24 hours later by China's orbiter-rover combo. NASA's rover, the cosmic caboose, will arrive on the scene a week later, on February 18, to collect rocks for return to Earth — a key step in determining whether life ever existed at Mars.
China's first Mars mission, a joint effort with Russia in 2011, never made it past Earth's orbit.
The U.S. rover Perseverance, by contrast, will dive in straight away for a harrowing sky-crane touchdown.
Despite their differences — the 1-ton Perseverance is larger and more elaborate than the Tianwen-1 rover — both will prowl for signs of ancient microscopic life.
Perseverance is aiming for an ancient river delta that seems a logical spot for once harboring life. This landing zone in Jezero Crater is so treacherous that NASA nixed it for Curiosity, but so tantalizing that scientists are keen to get hold of its rocks.
Until Perseverance, NASA sought out flat, boring terrain on which to land — "one giant parking lot," Chen said. That's what China's Tianwen-1 rover will be shooting for in Mars' Utopia Planitia.
NASA is upping its game thanks to new navigation technology designed to guide the rover to a safe spot. The spacecraft also has a slew of cameras and microphones to capture the sights and sounds of descent and landing, a Martian first.
https://www.voanews.com/science-health/3...succession
And apparently UAE's probe just arrived in the orbit around Mars.
Only Elon doesn't have anything on Mars, and yet he plans to send humans soon as possible, sometimes even with rumors in 2024.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
