Perseverance is about to attempt a landing on Mars as part of NASA's "most ambitious" rover mission ever.
The Perseverance rover, which launched in July 2020 on a mission to search for signs of ancient life on Mars, is scheduled for a landing attempt on Thursday afternoon, with the rover expected to touch down in the Jezero Crater at about 3:55 p.m. Eastern.
It's a highly significant mission, as "this is the first time in history where we're going to go to Mars with an explicit mission to find life on another world — ancient life on Mars," as then-NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine explained last year before the launch. There are a number of firsts associated with the mission, in fact, as CNN notes that "along for the ride with Perseverance is an experiment to fly a helicopter, called Ingenuity, on another planet for the first time," and the aim is to also get the "first recordings of sound on the red planet."
NASA's Thomas Zurbuchen describes this as "NASA’s most ambitious Mars rover mission yet," adding that the "landing team will have its hands full getting us to Jezero Crater — the most challenging Martian terrain ever targeted for a landing."
The "riskiest portion" of the mission, NASA notes, is what's known as the "seven minutes of terror" as the rover makes its way down to Mars. Since the radio signal will take 11 minutes to travel from Mars to Earth, The New York Times Times writes, "if anything were to go wrong, it would already be too late by the time people in NASA's mission operations center got word." CNN also notes this is the heaviest rover NASA will ever try to land.
"I will be extremely nervous," acting NASA administrator Steve Jurczyk acknowledged to the Times.
Ron_Fuckin_Swanson on February 18th, 2021 at 16:05 UTC »
You are not going to see a huge swath of GOPers suddenly become Democrats in Texas.
But there will be some that will vote blue in the next state elections because of this debacle. And there will be some that simply won’t vote.
The Republican response to this crisis only highlights the core values of the party
Money over everything...and when in doubt, blame anything and everything but the guilty parties
whileoceaniasleeps on February 18th, 2021 at 15:45 UTC »
Someone in r/texas was like “nOt suRe wHat yOu wAnt tEd CrUz tO Do, hE DoEsNt lOok liKe a pLumBer or eLectRiCian to Me!!” I don’t know, not piss all over his constituents by fucking off to the tropics while they freeze? Take their calls and share resources? Be a leader? Goddamn, a Senator is more than a vote on 2A but the bar for some people is just lower than dirt.
ositola on February 18th, 2021 at 15:44 UTC »
The interesting part is that cruz knew he would be spotted leaving texas and it would be talked about but since he's a 300 lb sentient pile of shit, he did it anyway
Edit: I'm stating he's a large piece of shit, I'm not fat shaming him.....that would require him to feel shame