Mars robots take over cruise control during solar event

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My tech-cluttered environment has recently been replaced by mountain trails and a lake where sunlight has scattered like diamonds.

Standing at the base of two converging waterfalls, the fine spray of mist across my face, I reminded myself that natural wonders are never out of reach – we just forget to look for them.

Ferns grew sideways on the rock faces, dancing in the breeze generated by the mighty roar of the water. The words to John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” came to mind: “Life is old there, older than trees, younger than mountains, it grows like a breeze.”

And taking a break isn’t just for humans – something similar is about to happen on Mars.

Solar update

This diagram illustrates the position of Mars, the Earth and the sun during the solar conjunction of Mars.

When the sun interposes itself between Mars and Earth, NASA encounters a communication problem with its robotic explorers on the red planet. Mars’ solar conjunction occurs between October 2 and October 16, and the event occurs for a few weeks every two years.

But that doesn’t mean all exploration stops – instead, Martian rovers and orbiters operate with simplified cruise control.

Think of it as a two-week Martian summer break for unsupervised robots and some rest for their busy teams on Earth.

Once this brief respite is over, the Perseverance rover will attempt to take its next sample and the Mars Ingenuity helicopter will make its 14th flight.

We are a family

A 40,000-year-old chamber has been discovered inside a Gibraltar cave, and it may reveal the mysterious lifestyles and rituals of the Neanderthals who once lived there.

The 42-foot-deep (13-meter-deep) chamber includes the fossil remains of predators as well as scrapes made by some carnivores with an impressive set of claws.

Clive Finlayson, director and chief scientist at the National Museum of Gibraltar, said entering the cave gave him goosebumps. “How many times in your life are you going to find something that no one has known for 40,000 years? It only happens once in your life, I think.”

Wild kingdom

A cassowary can be aggressive, but it "printed" easily - it attaches itself to the first thing it sees after hatching.
It is often called the most dangerous bird in the world: aggressive and territorial, with dagger-shaped toes, the flightless cassowary is not a bird you would want to face.

The first humans of New Guinea actually raised cassowary chicks long before they had chickens, new research shows.

Scientists have studied thousands of fossil eggshells between 18,000 and 6,000 years old. (Chickens were domesticated about 9,500 years ago.)

In other news of ancient discoveries, a rare fossil of a 25-million-year-old eagle that hunted koalas has been found in South Australia. And the “horned crocodile-faced hell heron” is one of two new dinosaur fossil finds from a popular tourist destination that many refer to as “Dinosaur Island.”

Consequences

The impressive ivory-billed woodpecker is no longer with us.

It is just one of more than two dozen species of birds, fish and other wildlife that will be declared extinct and removed from the U.S. endangered species list.

Human activity has led to the decline of these species, and their disappearance is a wake-up call as other animals continue to be threatened by habitat loss and the factors of increasing climate crises.

Nearly 3 billion birds have been lost in North America since 1970, and nearly two-thirds of North American birds will become extinct if global warming continues. Fortunately, there are ways to help our feathered friends.

Across the universe

This illustration shows the Lucy spacecraft passing one of the Trojan asteroids near Jupiter.

Lucy is about to be in the sky with diamonds. A new NASA spacecraft that will observe mysterious asteroids is about to jump off the launch pad on October 16.

A 12-year mission will send the Lucy spacecraft on an epic flyby of eight never-before-seen asteroids.

The Trojan asteroids, which borrow their name from Greek mythology, orbit the sun in two swarms – one in front of Jupiter and the other behind it.

These asteroids are remnants of the early days of our solar system. Lucy’s observations could help us understand how the solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago and why the planets ended up in their current locations.

Take note

Keep an eye out:

– Some of the greatest scientific minds will be honored when the Nobel Prizes are announced next week. Here are some deserving candidates who could win.
– The BepiColumbo mission flew within 200 kilometers of Mercury on Friday, the first of six overflights before the spacecraft orbiting the planet in 2025.
– This Scottish gin benefits our climate in three ways – and it’s made from a very unlikely ingredient.
Do you like what you read? Oh, but there is more. register here to receive the next edition of Wonder Theory, brought to your inbox, brought to you by writer CNN Space and Science Ashley Strickland, which finds wonders in planets beyond our solar system and discoveries of the ancient world.



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