USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fwd: Chinese Spacecraft Poised for First Mars Mission

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From: Scientific American Space & Physics <news@email.scientificamerican.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2020 at 17:16
Subject: Chinese Spacecraft Poised for First Mars Mission
To: <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com>

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July 16, 2020

Dear Reader, The march to Mars continues this week, with our lead story covering Tianwen-1, the first foray beyond cislunar space for China's burgeoning program of interplanetary exploration. Composed of an orbiter, a lander and a rover, this audacious mission is one of three set to launch later this month or early next, all with an aim of deepening our understanding of the Red Planet and its prospects for past and present life. Elsewhere, astronomers are using sophisticated statistical techniques to grapple with the thorny problem of estimating the odds of life beyond the solar system, Europe's Solar Orbiter delivers stunning close-ups of the Sun, and skywatchers around the world are continuing to marvel at the spectacular celestial show from Comet NEOWISE. Read all this—and more—below. And, when you're finished reading, consider signing up for our upcoming webinar Dark Frontiers, a conversation between yours truly and the Yale astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan about the science of black holes. Tune in next Thursday, July 23 at 3 P.M. Eastern time to learn more and submit your own questions about the universe's most extreme objects!

Lee Billings, Senior Editor, Space & Physics @LeeBillings

Space Chinese Spacecraft Poised for First Mars Mission Tianwen-1 will attempt to send an orbiter, lander and rover to the Red Planet, a historically difficult destination By Ling Xin

Space How Many Aliens Are in the Milky Way? Astronomers Turn to Statistics for Answers The tenets of Thomas Bayes, an 18th-century statistician and minister, underpin the latest estimates of the prevalence of extraterrestrial life By Anil Ananthaswamy

Space This Photo of the Sun Is the Closest Ever Taken Close-up reveals a surface dancing with 'campfires' By Elizabeth Gibney,Nature magazine

Space Comet NEOWISE Could Be Spectacular: Here's How to See It Already visible to the naked eye, the object may soon brighten to create the greatest celestial light show in decades—or it could simply fade away By Scott Hershberger

Physics The Universe's Clock Might Have Bigger Ticks Than We Imagine A new experiment places limits on the smallest possible increment of time By Adam Mann,LiveScience

Physics Living with Scientific Uncertainty We're inevitably forced to make decisions without knowing all of the facts By Avi Loeb

Space Cape Canaveral Prepares for First Polar Launches in 60 Years   Florida will soon reopen to launches for pole-orbiting spacecraft  By Irene Klotz

Physics How Scientists Solved One of the Greatest Open Questions in Quantum Physics The story of a macroscopic quantum system and a mathematical odyssey By Spyridon Michalakis

Space Aliens Could Have 100 Eyes Originally published in November 1854

FROM THE STORE Scientific American Space & Physics For $19.99 per year, your subscription includes six bi-monthly digital issues and every digital Space & Physics issue ever published!

QUOTE OF THE DAY "We don't necessarily have to survey every star in our galaxy to figure out how likely it is for any given place to harbor life. One or two more data points, and suddenly, we know about, essentially, the universe in terms of its propensity for producing life or possibly intelligence. And that's rather powerful." Caleb Scharf, Scientific American

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FROM THE ARCHIVE Alone in a Crowded Milky Way Even a galaxy teeming with star-hopping alien civilizations should still harbor isolated, unvisited worlds—and Earth might be among them By Caleb Scharf | January 2020

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