NASA about to pull plug on Mars rover

Mark Kelly joins exclusive club of astronaut-politicians

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla, Feb 13, (AP): NASA is trying one last time to contact its record-setting Mars rover Opportunity, before calling it quits.

The rover has been silent for eight months, victim of one of the most intense dust storms in decades. Thick dust darkened the sky last summer and, for months, blocked sunlight from the spacecraft’s solar panels.

NASA said Tuesday it will issue a final series of recovery commands, on top of more than 1,000 already sent. If there’s no response by Wednesday which NASA suspects will be the case – Opportunity will be declared dead, 15 years after arriving at the red planet.

Team members are already looking back at Opportunity’s achievements, including confirmation water once flowed on Mars. Opportunity was, by far, the longest-lasting lander on Mars. Besides endurance, the six-wheeled rover set a roaming record of 28 miles (45 kilometers.) Its identical twin, Spirit, was pronounced dead in 2011, a year after it got stuck in sand and communication ceased.

Both outlived and outperformed expectations, on opposite sides of Mars. The golf cart-size rovers were designed to operate as geologists for just three months, after bouncing onto our planetary neighbor inside cushioning air bags in January 2004. They rocketed from Cape Canaveral a month apart in 2003.

It’s no easier saying goodbye now to Opportunity, than it was to Spirit, project manager John Callas told The Associated Press.

Deputy project scientist Abigail Fraeman was a 16-year-old high school student when Opportunity landed on Mars; she was inside the control center as part of an outreach program. Inspired, Fraeman went on to become a planetary scientist, joined NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and ended up deputy project scientist for Opportunity. “It gives you an idea just how long this mission has lasted,” she said. “Opportunity’s just been a workhorse

So-called megaliths have long fascinated archaeologists because of the immense skill and effort required to build monuments like Stonehenge in England.

Using thousands of radiocarbon measurements, Bettina Schulz Paulsson of ... it’s really a testament, I think, to how well the mission was designed and how careful the team was in operating the vehicle.”

Rather than viewing the dust storm as bad luck, Callas considers it “good luck that we skirted so many possible storms’ over the years. Global dust storms typically kick up every few years, and “we had gone a long time without one.” Unlike NASA’s nuclear-powered Curiosity rover still chugging along on Mars, Opportunity and Spirit were never designed to endure such severe weather.

Cornell University’s Steve Squyres, lead scientist for both Opportunity and Spirit, considers succumbing to a ferocious storm an “honorable way” for the mission to end.

“You could have lost a lot of money over the years betting against Opportunity,” Squyres told the AP Tuesday.

The rovers’ greatest gift, according to Squyres, was providing a geologic record at two distinct places where water once flowed on Mars, and describing the conditions there that may have supported possible ancient life.

NASA last heard from Opportunity on June 10. Flight controllers tried to awaken the rover, devising and sending command after command, month after month. The Martian skies eventually cleared enough for sunlight to reach the rover’s solar panels, but there was still no response. Now it’s getting colder and darker at Mars, further dimming prospects.

Engineers speculate the rover’s internal clock may have become scrambled during the prolonged outage, disrupting the rover’s sleep cycle and draining onboard batteries. It’s especially frustrating, according to Callas, not knowing precisely why Opportunity – or Spirit – failed.

As for Opportunity, “It has given us a larger world,” Callas said. “Mars is now part of our neighborhood.”

Meanwhile,Retired astronaut Mark Kelly entered the race Tuesday to finish John McCain’s term in the US Senate, looking to join a small club of space

the University of Gothenburg in Sweden performed a statistical analysis of European monuments, concluding that the earliest sites were built in Brittany between 4,500 and 4,100 BC.

In an email Tuesday, Paulsson said the

This undated photo released by the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities, shows an ancient workshop to build and repair ships, dating back to the Ptolemaic era in the country’s Sinai Peninsula, Egypt. The Antiquities Ministry said on Feb 12, 2019 that the excavations took place in Tel-Abu-Saifi an archaeological site in Northern Sinai. The site is said to have been the site of the Roman fortress of

Silla. (AP)

explorers who have served in the US Capitol.

Kelly and his twin brother, Scott Kelly, retired joined NASA in 1996 after flying combat missions in the US Navy. Mark Kelly flew his first of four space missions on the shuttle Endeavor in 2001 and commanded a mission on Endeavor in 2011, according to his campaign biography. He’s spent more than 50 days in space.

Here’s a look at some of the other astronauts who’ve turned to public office: John Glenn The first American to orbit the Earth, Glenn was later elected to the US Senate from Ohio and served four terms. He was a Democrat who worked to block the spread of weapons of mass destruction and was chairman of the Government Affairs Committee, according to his NASA biography. In 1998, while still a senator, he became the oldest person to go to space at age 77. He was involved with tests on the aging process during a nine-day mission on the Space Shutter Discovery. He died in 2016 at 95. Harrison “JACK” Schmitt The former Republican senator from New Mexico flew on Apollo 17 and was the 12th and last man to walk on the moon in 1972, according to the .S Geological Survey, where he worked as a geologist in Flagstaff, Arizona before joining NASA as a scientist-astronaut. Schmitt was elected to the Senate in 1976 and was the top Republican on the subcommittee overseeing space. He was defeated in his re-election bid six years later. He is 83. Jack Swigert Swigert is the man responsible for one of the most famous lines in NASA history: “Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” He was a backup pilot for the 1970 Apollo 13 mission and was swapped in a few days before the flight when Ken Mattingly was exposed to measles. Swigert, a Republican, was elected to represent the 6th Congressional District of Colorado but died in 1982 before taking office. He was 51.

findings challenge previous theories that claimed megaliths originated in the Middle East or developed independently in different parts of Europe.

Mike Parker Pearson, an archaeologist at University College London, called it a “great exercise in big data analysis” but urged further research to determine how the practice spread. (AP)

Police search for stolen monkey:

Police in Florida are on the lookout for a little monkey, stolen from the Palm Beach Zoo.

Zoo spokeswoman Naki Carter announced Tuesday that 12-year-old Kali, a rare Goeldi’s monkey, was taken from the zoo in West Palm Beach on Monday. A zookeeper discovered the monkey missing during early morning rounds, and then saw that the mesh on her enclosure had been cut open.

Police are seeking help identifying a person seen in surveillance video walking along the zoo’s perimeter early Monday. (AP)

Oldest known wild bird hatches:

The oldest known wild bird in the world has become a mother again at the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, US wildlife officials said.

The Laysan albatross named Wisdom hatched a chick earlier this month at the remote atoll northwest of Hawaii, the Honolulu Star – Advertiser reported Monday. (AP)