Earth to Mars rover: One final shot at last contact
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. An intense dust storm on Mars last summer blocked sunlight from the spacecraft’s solar panels.
NASA said Tuesday it will issue a final series of recovery commands. If there’s no response by Wednesday, Opportunity will be declared dead, 15 years after arriving at the red planet.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared Tuesday there “isn’t a path” for completing the state’s plan for a high-speed rail line between San Francisco and Los Angeles, yet his office insisted he is fully committed to building such a project.
Newsom, delivering his first State of the State address, said he’d shift his focus to completing just a 171mile segment of the line already under construction in the state’s Central Valley. The project is key to the economic vitality of the state’s agricultural heartland, he said.
A high-speed rail line linking Los Angeles to San Francisco was the goal when voters approved a ballot measure in 2008. The roughly 520mile line initially was estimated to cost $33 billion and was pegged for completion in 2020. Officials eventually hoped to connect the line to San Diego and Sacramento.
But subsequent estimates more than doubled the cost to $77 billion and pushed the timeline to 2033.
“Let’s be real,” Newsom said. “The project, as currently planned, would cost too much and take too long … Right now, there simply isn’t a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to L.A. I wish there were.”
Newsom said he’d continue doing environmental reviews for the LASan Francisco line and seek private investment to connect the Central Valley to the state’s major hubs, prompting confusion about whether he actually was changing the policy of his predecessor, Jerry Brown.
Newsom’s spokesman Nathan Click said the governor is committed to completing the longer line with additional private and federal money “as the Central Valley section demonstrates the viability of the broader project.”
The questions about Newsom’s rail plans clouded his first State of the State address in which he outlined his vision for leading the nation’s most populous state. California, he said, faces “hard decisions that are coming due” on clean water, housing and homelessness.
Newsom used the speech to contrast his administration with Brown’s as much as he did to take issue with President Donald Trump. He blasted the president’s views on immigration — Newsom called the border emergency “a manufactured crisis” — but also complimented Trump’s calls for lowering prescription drug costs.
Newsom said the state risked having to return $3.5 billion in federal money if building stops on the Central Valley leg or it doesn’t complete the environmental reviews.
Democratic state Sen. Anna Caballero, who represents part of the Central Valley, called the shift to a line only from Bakersfield to Merced “disappointing.”