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During its first Earth year on Mars, the Perseverance rover has used its sampling arm to collect rock cores and explore the red planet's geochemistry.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
How Mars rover hit the geological jackpot
Since landing on Mars one year ago, NASA’s Perseverance rover has travelled more than 3 kilometres across the bottom of Jezero Crater, recorded the first helicopter flight on another planet and collected six precious rock samples that — if all goes well — will one day be returned to Earth. Jezero offered a surprise: its floor is made of igneous rocks, which formed as molten rock cooled and solidified billions of years ago. Samples should allow researchers to date rocks from specific places on the surface of Mars for the first time. The rover will soon head to its ultimate destination, an ancient river delta, where it will look for signs of past life.
Two scientists will replace Lander
Leading sociologist Alondra Nelson and former US National Institutes of Health head Francis Collins will split the duties of US science adviser Eric Lander, who resigned on 7 February. Nelson, a deputy director at the Office of Science and Technology Policy, will take the helm there. Collins will become Biden’s science adviser and co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. This division of Lander’s duties between two people is expected to be temporary.
China sets out bold space agenda
The China National Space Administration has released an overview of its plans for the next five years, which include launching a robotic craft to an asteroid, building a space telescope to rival the Hubble and laying the foundations for a space-based gravitational-wave detector. The plans continue the country’s trend in emphasizing missions with science at their heart, rather than technology development and applications, says astronomer Shuang-Nan Zhang. “This is a very good sign,” he says. “It’s a continuous increase in investment in exploration of the Universe.”
Reference: China National Space Administration white paper
Features & opinion
His catalysts transformed chemistry
Nobel prizewinner Robert Grubbs’s organometallic catalysts reshaped synthetic chemistry, polymer science, advanced materials science and pharmaceuticals. Grubbs has died aged 79. Grubbs had a folksy wisdom hailing from his upbringing near Possum Trot, a rural community in western Kentucky, writes his former student Parisa Mehrkhodavandi. “One of my favourite pieces of unsolicited advice was: ‘When you reach a fork in the road … take it!’,” writes Mehrkhodavandi. “He did.”
Pandemic of the immunocompromised
For people with weakened immune systems in the United States, the end of public-health protections means their lives are further curtailed. Changes that protect them — such as flexible work policies, test and treatment availability, and paid leave — have widespread benefits. Yet some approaches to pandemic recovery take risking their lives and well-being as a given. “Everyone’s going to deal with illness at some point in their life,” said literature professor Maggie Levantovskaya, who has the autoimmune disorder lupus. “Don’t you want a better world for yourself when that time comes?”
The Atlantic | 18 min read
Five best science books this week
Andrew Robinson’s pick of the top five science books to read this week includes an exploration of why play is both fascinating and necessary, a survey of the present and future of biotechnology and the climate-change-driven death of ‘the treeline’.
Podcast: Tonga blast changed volcanology
The extraordinary power of the eruption that devastated Tonga on 15 January, captured by a range of sophisticated Earth-observing satellites, is challenging ideas about the physics of eruptions. Researchers are finding it hard to explain why the volcano sent an ash plume into the upper atmosphere, yet emitted less ash than expected for an eruption of such magnitude. And the shock waves that rippled through the atmosphere and oceans are unlike anything seen in the modern scientific era.
Nature Podcast | 26 min listen
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