All Images are available at mars.nasa.gov
Perseverance’s parachute displays a code. Wish I figured this out! But someone did: “Dare Mighty Things” and the gps coordinates of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. These are binary numbers describing the letter’s position in the alphabet.
The landing video, and the first audio recordings from Mars!
Here’s SciManDan taking up a flat Earther’s £10,000 challenge to refute his wonderfully poor argument.
Flat Earth nonsense quickly gets tiring but I’m linking to this because the faulty reasoning is interesting: Scale.
Speaking of scale: Microcosmos produce gorgeous footage of bacteria, fungi and larger viruses. Head to the 6m mark to see what soap does to bacteria.
The Perseverance Mars rover is nuclear powered, not solar. The technology (explained by the always excellent Scott Manley) has been around for a long time and the Soviet Union even used it to power lighthouses in remote locations. Worryingly people have tried to steal them, or, more precisely dismantle them for scrap. My favourite quote from this article comes when the interviewer asks a Russian navy chap about the thieves:
Moreover, Yarosh said, the danger of RTGs can be seen as a plus, and not a minus. “RTGs are already protected by the fact that they’re dangerous. People will steal alternative sources of nonferrous metals.”
I mean yeah, all my favourite sources of nonferrous metals to steal don’t surround radioactive Strontium. It’s just the way I am.
Applied Science has a wonderful walkthrough of his thought process for designing a new project. There is genuinely nothing this guy can’t build!