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  Published Date: 2020-07-31 

 On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Cuomo Primetime,” host Chris Cuomo stated that he hopes former presidential candidate Herman Cain will rest in peace, and that he wishes “that this president have no peace until he thinks about what he’s exposing people to. He didn’t even mention that Mr. Cain was at his rally among the maskless masses right before he was diagnosed. Now, maybe he didn’t get it there. Sure as hell didn’t help.” Cuomo said, “We wish his family well, and we wish that he rest in peace, and I wish that this president have no peace until he thinks about what he’s exposing people to. He didn’t even mention that Mr. Cain was at his rally among the maskless masses right before he was diagnosed. Now, maybe he didn’t get it there. Sure as hell didn’t help. May Herman Cain rest in peace. He fell ill not long after that rally in June, the one in Tulsa, Oklahoma. You see him not wearing a mask. How many lives do we have to lose? How many have to be sick? How many have to have their lives changed? How many businesses have to close? How many kids have to go underserved and fall behind? How much more inequality and inequity must there be for something that is within our control? When will you say enough? When will you demand action? This is not about our democracy being in doubt. This is about the strength of our leadership, absolutely, being in doubt.” Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett 

  Published Date: 2020-07-31 

 Humanity's first interplanetary sample-return campaign is now underway. NASA's car-sized Perseverance Mars rover launched yesterday (July 30), kicking off a nearly seven-month cruise to the Red Planet. Perseverance will hunt for signs of ancient Mars life after its February 2021 touchdown on the floor of Jezero Crater , which hosted a lake and a river delta billions of years ago. But the nuclear-powered robot will also collect and cache at least 20 samples of Red Planet rock and soil for future return to Earth, so scientists can scrutinize the stuff in far more detail than Perseverance could ever manage on its own. The returned samples have the potential to "change our understanding of the origin, evolution and distribution of life on Earth and elsewhere in the solar system," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said during a prelaunch news conference on Tuesday (July 28). Live Updates: NASA's Mars rover Perseverance mission in real time More: NASA's Mars Perseverance rover to the Red Planet (photos) A pioneering campaign NASA has conducted sample-return missions before. The Apollo astronauts hauled home 842 lbs. (382 kilograms) of moon rocks between 1969 and 1972, for example, and the agency's Stardust mission returned flecks of comet dust to Earth in January 2006. In addition, NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission is preparing to snag samples of the asteroid Bennu, which will make it here in September 2023 if all goes according to plan. And NASA isn't alone in the sample-return game. Japan's Hayabusa2 probe will land pieces of the asteroid Ryugu this December, and the original Hayabusa returned grains of the stony asteroid Itokawa to Earth in 2010. But nobody has successfully executed an interplanetary sample-return mission yet, and it's not hard to understand why. Such an effort is incredibly complex, time-consuming and expensive, especially when the material coming back to Earth may bear signatures of alien life . (Russia tried to send a sample-return mission called Phobos-Grunt to the Mars moon Phobos in 2011, but the spacecraft crashed back to Earth after a launch failure .) Consider the campaign that Perseverance's launch just initiated. The nuclear-powered rover will snag a few dozen carefully selected samples, storing the precious material in sterile tubes that will be cached somewhere in Jezero Crater. (Perseverance might also hold onto some of the samples, mission team members have said.) The next step, if all goes according to the current (provisional) plan, comes with two launches in 2026. One launch will send the NASA-led Sample Retrieval Lander (SRL) mission toward Mars, and the second will loft the Earth Return Orbiter (ERO), which is helmed by the European Space Agency (ESA). The SRL includes a rocket and a small, ESA-provided "fetch rover," which will do exactly what its name indicates: find the cached samples and bring them back to the lander. The samples will then be loaded into a football-size canister on board the rocket, which will launch itself into Martian orbit. Once up there, the rocket will deploy the sample canister, which the ERO will pluck out of the void and ferry back toward Earth. When it nears our planet, the ERO will release the canister, which will land in the Utah desert in 2031. The Mars samples will then be transported to a receiving facility in a location that has yet to be determined, where scientists will start taking stock of their newly delivered cosmic treasure. A big part of the initial assessment will involve ensuring that the Mars material poses no threat to life on Earth. This is no idle concern, given that the Red Planet was likely habitable in the ancient past and parts of it — subsurface aquifers, for example — may still be capable of supporting life as we know it today. The receiving facility's design will therefore be modeled on labs that handle and study the most dangerous contagious pathogens on Earth, said NASA Planetary Protection Officer Lisa Pratt. "Not that we really think there will be anything pathogenic or highly dangerous from Mars," Pratt said in the July 28 news conference. "But we're going to be extremely cautious." Again, the NASA-ESA retrieval plan has yet to be finalized; the dates or other details could change. But a major architectural overhaul is unlikely. Related: The search for life on Mars (a photo timeline) Better than meteorites Scientists have been studying pieces of Mars here on Earth for decades — Red Planet rocks that made their way to Earth after getting blasted into space by powerful impacts. Indeed, one such Mars meteorite, known as Allan Hills 84001, bears what some scientists have interpreted as likely signs of Red Planet life. (Most other researchers regard the evidence as inconclusive, however, and debate continues to this day .) Perseverance's samples will be superior scientifically to these previously examined Red Planet rocks, mission team members said. For starters, Mars meteorites are hardly pristine; they've endured trips through two planetary atmospheres and millions of miles of deep space, as well as lengthy stays on our planet's messy, life-shaped surface. But the material selected by Perseverance, the centerpiece of NASA's $2.7 billion Mars 2020 mission , will be hermetically sealed immediately after collection. In addition, Mars meteorites are random chunks that tend to be volcanic and young. Rocks from Jezero Crater, on the other hand, are billions of years old and preserve a history of a potentially habitable environment. And the rover team will get to pick the most intriguing samples from this already promising lot. "The great thing about Perseverance is that, instead of nature choosing for us, we will get to choose which rocks come back to Earth, along with our careful documentation about where and why they were collected," Chris Herd of the University of Alberta in Canada, a Mars 2020 returned-sample scientist, said during the July 28 news conference. Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

  Published Date: 2020-07-31 

 An artist's impression of NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity. (Image credit: NASA) The first helicopter designed to fly on another planet is now on its way to Mars. NASA's Mars helicopter, called Ingenuity, is hitching a ride to the Red Planet with the agency's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, which lifted off on an Atlas V rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station today (July 30). Tucked beneath the rover's belly, Ingenuity will spend the next six months en route to Mars. The mission is scheduled to land on Mars on Feb. 18, 2021, and within the next few months the rotorcraft will attempt the first-ever flight through another planet's atmosphere. Related: Meet Ingenuity: Alabama teen names NASA's Mars helicopter Live Updates: NASA's Mars rover Perseverance mission in real time "We as human beings have never flown or rotorcraft outside of our own Earth's atmosphere, so this will actually be a very much a Wright Brothers moment, except on another planet," Mimi Aung, NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter project manager, said in a news conference on Tuesday (July 28). While NASA and other space agencies around the world have sent landers, orbiters and rovers to the Red Planet, no one has attempted to fly an aircraft on another planet before. On Mars the atmosphere is much thinner than it is on Earth, which means there's less air to generate lift and more technical challenges in designing a craft that will stay aloft. "Flying a rotorcraft at Mars is very difficult. First and foremost, the atmosphere there is very thin, about 1% compared to the Earth's atmospheric density here," Aung said. "To build a vehicle that can fly at Mars, it has to be very light and be able to spin very fast." In photos: NASA's Mars Perseverance rover mission to the Red Planet Ingenuity is tucked under the belly of the Perseverance rover. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) Ingenuity weighs about 4 lbs. (1.8 kilograms) and has two counter-rotating blades that measure about 4 feet (1.2 meters) long. Those blades should spin at a rate of about 2,400 revolutions per minute, NASA said in Ingenuity's mission description. To test the helicopter, NASA simulated the Martian atmosphere in a testing chamber at the agency's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California. While Ingenuity is only an experimental mission — its primary objective is to test powered flight on Mars — a successful flight could shape the future of exploration on Mars. For robotic missions like the Perseverance rover, helicopters could scout the Martian terrain and help plan driving routes. With that same aerial view, rotorcraft could also be used to study the planet's geology from a different perspective, and they could even help astronauts explore Mars someday, NASA said. "This Mars helicopter Ingenuity could lead to the opening up of a whole new way to explore space" and to take "exploration missions to the aerial dimension," Aung said. Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

  Published Date: 2020-07-31 

 A weird long cloud has formed so many times over the same Martian volcano that scientists have given up and named it. Meet the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud, or AMEC. Its long bright trail has become a familiar feature over the peak known as Arsia Mons, to the southeast of the more famous Olympus Mons . Although the cloud comes and goes over the volcano, scientists say it isn't formed by the volcano itself. And it is timely: Scientists affiliated with Europe's Mars Express orbiter were waiting for it to show up again on its yearly cycle. "We have been investigating this intriguing phenomenon and were expecting to see such a cloud form around now," Jorge Hernandez-Bernal, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of the Basque Country in Spain and the lead author of the ongoing study, said in a statement released by the European Space Agency (ESA), which runs the spacecraft. Photos: Red Planet views from Europe's Mars Express "This elongated cloud forms every Martian year during this season around the southern solstice, and repeats for 80 days or even more," Hernandez-Bernal said. "However, we don't know yet if the clouds are always quite this impressive." So far, scientists have caught the cloud clocking in as long as 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers), according to ESA. The tail-like structure is made of water ice, and despite its location over Arsia Mons, it isn't formed by the volcano itself, scientists said, but instead by the way local winds interact with the topography. And the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud doesn't just come, stick around for a while, then dissipate. It forms and fades over the course of a few hours each local morning, then returns the next day. That makes the weird cloud difficult to study from orbit around the Red Planet. But Mars Express is uniquely qualified to do so. It carries an instrument called the Visual Monitoring Camera , which can photograph an unusually wide swath of the planet in a single frame. And the spacecraft's orbit lines up to put Arsia Mons in its view during the morning hours when the cloud is visible. Mars Express images of Arsia Mons on Mars and its strange long cloud, taken on July 17 and July 19, 2020. (Image credit: ESA/GCP/UPV/EHU Bilbao) "The extent of this huge cloud can't be seen if your camera only has a narrow field of view, or if you're only observing in the afternoon," Eleni Ravanis, a graduate trainee on the Visual Monitoring Camera team, said in the statement. "Luckily for Mars Express, the highly elliptical orbit of the spacecraft, coupled with the wide field of view of the VMC instrument, lets us take pictures covering a wide area of the planet in the early morning. That means we can catch it!" The scientists last spotted Arsia Mons' tail-like cloud in September and October 2018. At the time and again now, the days are the shortest of the year in the Red Planet's northern hemisphere and the longest of the year in the southern hemisphere. Arsia Mons itself is located just a bit south of the Martian equator and stretches to an altitude of about 12 miles (20 km). Scientists hope that by continuing to study the strange cloud, they can begin to understand how long it has been making its appearances and why it appears only in the mornings. Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

  Published Date: 2020-07-31 

 With the successful launch of NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover Thursday (July 30), three countries now have craft barreling towards the Red Planet. So is this a Martian space race? Not exactly. But it is an exciting coincidence for planetary science. The Perseverance rover's launch marks the third mission to blast off for Mars in the last two weeks. First, the United Arab Emirates launched its "Hope" orbiter to Mars atop a Japanese rocket on July 19. The orbiter that will arrive at Mars' orbit in February 2021. Then, on July 23, China's Tianwen-1 mission launched, sending an orbiter, lander and rover to the Red Planet for their own February 2021 arrival. Finally, today's Perseverance mission lifted off on a mission to land in the massive Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021. So, with three craft barreling through space towards the Red Planet, it might seem like the most literal definition of a "space race." But, according to NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, this is not the case. Live Updates: NASA's Mars rover Perseverance launch in real time! China "launched a rover to Mars as well," Bridenstine said Wednesday (July 29) during a news conference. "And certainly, we welcome more science. We welcome more discovery," he said of China. "We encourage them to share what they learn with the entire world, just as NASA shares what it learns with the entire world, so we look forward to them doing that." "I hear people frame it as though it's a race. I want to be really clear on this," Bridenstine added. "This is our ninth time to land a robot on Mars. So we've already done this a few times." Bridenstine emphasized that the U.S., China and UAE missions are launching and landing (or arriving in Hope's case) at similar times but are not "racing" to get there first. So, why are so many missions launching in such a small window of time? There is a short period of time every 26 months when Earth and Mars come close together. This window of opportunity allows for the quickest and most efficient journey from Earth to Mars. This window closes mid-August so, if these missions decided to wait, they would have to delay until the next window, which is in 2022. Related: Here's how NASA's Perseverance rover get to Mars? This would not only delay the mission and its objectives, but it could end up being extremely expensive. For example, Bridenstine said, if NASA had to delay the Perseverance launch to 2022, they would "have to put this robot into storage," he said. And "it will cost the American taxpayers half a billion dollars." In fact, there was a fourth mission originally scheduled to launch to Mars this month by yet another team of countries. The European Space Agency (ESA) and Russia's Roscosmos agency had hoped to launch the ExoMars rover Rosalind Franklin to Mars in July, but parachute design problems and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic delayed the flight. That mission will now launch in 2022, ESA and Roscosmos have said. And Bridenstine noted that not only is Perseverance NASA's ninth mission designed to land on Mars, but the agency also has a number of other, groundbreaking missions underway, including the OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu, the New Horizons probe in the Kuiper Belt and a quickly growing commercial crew program. In other words, they're not "competing" for space accomplishments. Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

  Published Date: 2020-07-31 

 New 3D supercomputer simulations show the early stages of planetary collisions, demonstrating what may happen to an Earth-like planet struck by a giant object. Planets evolve over billions of years, as bits of dust and gas clump together . However, planetary formation can be easily disrupted by impacts from other celestial objects. Such collisions can cause a wide range of consequences for young planets, such as atmospheric loss, the 3D simulations suggest. Using a supercomputer called Cosmology Machine (COSMA), researchers from Durham University and the University of Glasgow, both in the U.K., simulated more than 100 different scenarios of objects traveling at varying speeds and angles colliding with an Earth-like planet with a thin atmosphere. Related: How did the solar system form? A 3D simulation showing the impact (inset) and aftermath (main picture) of a giant planetary collision. (Image credit: Jacob Kegerreis/Durham University) "We know that planetary collisions can have a dramatic effect on a planet's atmosphere, but this is the first time we've been able to study the wide varieties of these violent events in detail," Jacob Kegerreis, lead author of the study and an astronomer at Durham University, said in a university statement . "In spite of the remarkably diverse consequences that can come from different impact angles and speeds, we've found a simple way to predict how much atmosphere would be lost." The simulations suggest a slow, grazing impact causes less atmospheric loss than a fast, head-on collision. In fact, according to the statement, a direct hit could destroy not just a planet's entire atmosphere but even some of its mantle as well, the layer beneath a planet's crust. Earth's moon is believed to have formed about 4.5 billion years ago following a grazing impact of a small planet about the size Mars with Earth. The debris from this impact accumulated in orbit around Earth to form our moon . The new simulations suggest that this event may have stolen between 10% and 50% of early Earth's atmosphere. "At the moment, it appears that the amount of atmosphere a planet loses due to these collisions depends upon how lucky or unlucky they are in terms the type of the impact they suffer ," Vincent Eke, co-author of the study and a cosmologist at Durham University, said in the statement. Their findings, published on July 15 in the Astrophysical Journal, offer insight on planet formation in the early universe, as well as the aftermath of giant impacts. "This [research] lays the groundwork to be able to predict the atmospheric erosion from any giant impact, which would feed in to models of planet formation as a whole," Kegerreis said in the statement. "[These models] in turn will help us to understand both the Earth's history as a habitable planet and the evolution of exoplanets around other stars." Next, the researchers plan to run additional simulations to show what happens during planetary collisions with objects of various masses and compositions. Follow Samantha Mathewson @Sam_Ashley13. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

  Published Date: 2020-07-31 

 An artist's illustration of NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover in cruise mode after launching into space. The rover launched toward Mars July 30, 2020 and will arrive on Feb. 18, 2021. NASA is celebrating the launch of its most advanced Mars rover ever today (July 30), even as engineers tackle a glitch that left the spacecraft in a protective "safe mode" shortly after liftoff. The Mars 2020 Perseverance rover launched toward the Red Planet at 7:50 a.m. EDT (1150 GMT), riding an Atlas V rocket into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The rover experienced minor communications and temperature glitches after launch, but the issues aren't expected to harm the mission as a whole, NASA officials said. "It was an amazing launch , right on time," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said during a post-launch news conference. "I think we're in great shape. It was a great day for NASA." Live Updates: NASA's Mars rover Perseverance launch in real time! Shortly after the conference, NASA confirmed that Perseverance slipped into "safe mode" due to an unexpected temperature difference. "Data indicate the spacecraft had entered a state known as safe mode, likely because a part of the spacecraft was a little colder than expected while Mars 2020 was in Earth's shadow," NASA officials said in a statement. "All temperatures are now nominal and the spacecraft is out of Earth's shadow." Related: NASA's Mars Perseverance rover to the Red Planet (photos) Post-launch hiccups During today's post-launch news conference, the team received word that one issue, a lingering communications issue, was fixed. Within the first few hours after launch, although mission personnel could pick up the signal the spacecraft was sending home, it wasn't being processed correctly. However, that situation didn't cause much concern, Matt Wallace, deputy project manager for Mars 2020 with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, said during the briefing. The miscommunication was caused by the fact that NASA relies on a system called the Deep Space Network to communicate with Perseverance even soon after launch, when the spacecraft isn't yet all that deep into space. And, because the Deep Space Network is made up of massive antennas equipped with super sensitive receivers, the signal from a spacecraft so close to the network can end up blasting the system, like someone screaming directly into your ear. Engineers needed to tweak the network settings in order to actually process the information coming from the spacecraft. "Just as the administrator was speaking, I did just get a text that we were able to lock up on that telemetry," Wallace said. "All the indications that we have — and we have quite a few — are that the spacecraft is just fine." NASA's Curiosity rover faced a similar issue during its launch in 2011, Wallace said. "It's something that we've seen before with other Mars missions," Bridenstine said. "This is not unusual. Everything is going according to plan." Perseverance's 'safe mode' explained The mission team revealed a second post-launch hiccup shortly later in the news conference: Perseverance went into safe mode. When the spacecraft got a little colder than expected passing through Earth's shadow, it automatically put itself into that state, according to the NASA statement, although the spacecraft's temperature quickly bounced back and isn't concerning the team. Wallace emphasized that such a status shouldn't harm the mission as a whole. Safe mode is, as the name implies, designed to be safe for the spacecraft to be in right now. "The spacecraft is happy there," Wallace said. "The team is working through that telemetry, they're going to look to the rest of the spacecraft health. So far, everything I've seen looks good." Later, Wallace told Space.com that the Perseverance mission team had traced the the temperature issue to the system that uses freon to keep the rover's nuclear battery cool. Because Perserverance's launch carried it into Earth's shadow, it led to colder than expected temperatures in the cooling system, as compared to a launch in uninterrupted sunlight, Wallace told Space.com. When NASA's Curiosity rover, which has a similar nuclear battery, launched in 2011, it was always in daylight and did not experience the issue, he added. "Unfortunately, our analysis is never really perfect," Wallace added. "Curiosity didn't have an eclipse in its flight trajectory so we didn't have flight data to know what was going to happen." "The spacecraft was never in jeopardy," he continued. "Our philosophy is to be overly conservative on the parameters because we'd much rather trigger a safing event we didn't need, than miss a safing event we do need." The team will continue to analyze the telemetry data that the vehicle has sent so far and double check that this is indeed the hiccup. Once that is complete, the team can put the rover back in an operational status. Wallace said he expects for the spacecraft to return to normal operations mode tomorrow (July 31). But the team is not in any rush and are taking their time to carefully review all the data. Perseverance is scheduled to fly straight and steady for the next at least two weeks, anyway, he said, and so the team has time to get the spacecraft back into normal operating mode before the first necessary trajectory adjustment of its journey. A gorgeous launch NASA's Mars rover Perseverance launches toward the Red Planet atop an Atlas V rocket, lifting off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on July 30, 2020. (Image credit: ULA) The launch itself went smoothly, with an unusually quiet countdown in mission control rooms, despite an earthquake that rattled southern California, including NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, about 20 minutes before the rocket fired in Florida. Today's liftoff marked an important victory for the agency, which worried that measures imposed to reduce the spread of the coronavirus pandemic might slow launch preparations enough that Perseverance might miss its three-week window for a launch, which is dependent on orbital trajectories. Another comparable opportunity wouldn't come again until 2022; if that 26-month delay had occurred, it would have cost the agency an extra $500 million, according to Bridenstine, on top of an already difficult mission. "[It was] adversity all along the way, but this is true for any project of this nature," Bridenstine said of struggles before the pandemic, which included a cracked heat shield and the late addition of a complicated ride-along helicopter . "Then you put on top of that the coronavirus … I'm not gonna lie, it's a challenge. It's very stressful. But look, the teams made it happen." But, despite earlier delays that pushed the launch more than a week into its window, the spacecraft blasted off during its first shot of its first countdown. "It was truly a team effort. And in every single case, everyone stood up and said, 'Yes, we want to do what we can to help,'" Lori Glaze, director of the agency's planetary science division, said. "Somehow, we made it through this." Now, the spacecraft and its human team back on Earth need to make it through a seven-month journey in deep space to reach the Red Planet. Once the spacecraft arrives at Mars, it will undergo the notoriously perilous process of entry, descent and landing. That process will unfold on Feb. 18, 2021. Editor's note: This story was updated at 5:54 p.m. EDT to include new comments from NASA's Matt Wallace on the Perseverance rover's safe mode event. Space.com contributor Amy Thompson contributed to this report from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

  Published Date: 2020-07-31 

 SpaceX just fired the engine of its latest Starship prototype, paving the way for a test flight in the near future. The company conducted a "static fire" test of Starship SN5 today (July 30), letting its single Raptor engine blaze while the vehicle remained tethered to the ground at SpaceX's South Texas facilities, near the village of Boca Chica. The successful trial apparently earned the stainless-steel SN5, a test version of SpaceX's Mars-colonizing Starship spacecraft, a chance to slip its leash. "Starship SN5 just completed full-duration static fire. 150m hop soon," SpaceX founder and CEO announced via Twitter today (July 30). Related: SpaceX's Starship and Super Heavy Mars Rocket in Pictures SpaceX conducts a static-fire test of its Starship SN5 prototype on July 30, 2020 at the company's Boca Chica facility in South Texas. (Image credit: Elon Musk via Twitter) SpaceX has been iterating toward the final Starship design via a series of SN prototypes. Most of SN5's predecessors were lost at some point in the testing process, either during pressure trials or static fires. SN4, for example, exploded during a static fire on May 30 , the fifth such test for the prototype. But SpaceX doesn't seem inclined to subject the SN5 to so many engine trials. If Musk's tweet is any guide, the vehicle could rise about 500 feet (150 meters) into the South Texas skies sometime in the next few days. Just one Starship prototype has made such an untethered flight to date: the stubby Starhopper, an early variant that was retired after getting several hundred feet off the ground in August 2019. The final version of Starship will feature six Raptor engines, stand about 165 feet (50 m) tall and be capable of carrying up to 100 people, Musk has said. The spaceship will launch atop a gigantic rocket called Super Heavy, which will be powered by 31 Raptors of its own. Starship and Super Heavy will be fully and rapidly reusable, Musk has said. The billionaire entrepreneur envisions the duo eventually filling all of SpaceX's needs, from launching satellites to Earth orbit to ferrying passengers to the moon, Mars and beyond. The spaceflight system could get up and running quickly if testing and development go well. SpaceX representatives have said that the first Starship/Super Heavy missions — likely launches of commercial communications satellites — could come as early as 2021. Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

  Published Date: 2020-07-31 

 Zippo's limited edition Mars 2020 collectible lighter commemorates the launch of NASA's Perseverance rover to Mars. (Image credit: Zippo) The liftoff of NASA's Perseverance rover sparked the launch of a new collectible in celebration of the Mars 2020 mission. Zippo, the iconic U.S. brand of reusable metal lighters, revealed its latest limited edition lighter in time with the start of NASA's first mission to search for and cache signs of microbial life on the Red Planet. "Celebrating today's steps toward the future of Martian exploration," Zippo posted to its website on Thursday morning (July 30) as a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. In photos: NASA's Mars Perseverance rover mission to the Red Planet Zippo's Mars 2020 collectible lighter features a gold plated Mars and laser engraved wireframe of the Perseverance rover. (Image credit: Zippo) The Mars Rover 2020 Collectible Lighter, which is only available through Zippo's online store, features a high-polish, black body with wireframe laser engravings depicting the Perseverance rover and Martian surface topography. The lighter also uses Zippo's new selective gold plating process to gild the Red Planet, casting a warm red Martian hue over the image. The front of the lighter is inscribed "Mars 2020" between the gold-plated image of Mars and the wireframe surface design. The rover decorates the opposite side. Limited to 1,000 consecutively-numbered pieces and packaged in a "luxury cube box," the Mars Rover 2020 Collectible Lighter retails for $125 each. Zippo's new Mars 2020 collectible lighter is a limited edition of 1,000 pieces and is exclusively available from the Zippo website for $125 each. (Image credit: Zippo) The Mars Rover 2020 Collectible Lighter continues a more than 50-year legacy of Zippo celebrating U.S. achievements in space. The company has made lighters with NASA and aerospace contractor designs dating back to the start of the space age. Previous Zippo lighter designs have commemorated NASA's human spaceflight programs, Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and the space shuttle. In particular, Zippo has been releasing lighters in celebration of the Apollo 11 first moon landing since the achievement was made in 1969, through 2019 for the mission's 50th anniversary. The Mars 2020 mission, which is scheduled to land in Mars' Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021, includes the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter. The vehicles are designed to achieve several firsts, including sending the first sound recordings back from Mars, collecting the first samples for a future return to Earth and making the first powered flight on another planet. The Perseverance rover is also the first spacecraft to support experiments directly aimed at advancing the day humans walk on Mars. Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2020 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved. 

  Published Date: 2020-07-28 

 Image copyright Reuters The UK government decision to impose a 14-day quarantine on everyone arriving from Spain was "unjust", the country's prime minister has said. Pedro Sánchez said tourists in most Spanish regions would be safer from coronavirus than in the UK, and he was hoping Britain would rethink its move. He said talks were ongoing after the UK also advised against all but essential travel to the whole of Spain. Labour said the government's handling of the restrictions had been "chaotic". But the UK government said it has no plans to change its decision to reintroduce the quarantine measures - with Boris Johnson's official spokesman warning that "no travel is risk-free during this pandemic". Asked about the risk to holidays to other destinations, junior government minister Simon Clarke said the possibility of the rules changing "has to be factored in". "By all means go on holiday but understand that there is a chance you may be asked to self-isolate upon your return," he said. On Monday, the Foreign Office also extended its travel advice for Spain, now telling people to avoid non-essential journeys to the Canary and Balearic Islands, as well as mainland Spain. But some travel agents say they are struggling to understand the logic of the UK government's advice, because the islands have lower coronavirus infection rates. 'UK error' In an interview with the Telecinco TV network, Mr Sánchez said his government was "talking with British authorities to try to get them to reconsider" the decision. The UK had made an "error" by considering the infection rate for the whole country, he said. He added that "64.5% of the new cases registered are in two territories" and in most of Spain the prevalence of Covid-19 was "very much inferior to the numbers registered in the United Kingdom". The rate of infection in Spain is 35.1 cases per 100,000 people, while the UK is at 14.7, according to the latest figures from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. While the outbreak remains under control in many parts of Spain, certain areas - in particular Catalonia in the north-east and the neighbouring region of Aragón - have seen a huge spike in infections. Data up to 19 July suggested there were lower rates of infection in the Balearic and Canary Islands than in mainland Spain. "Why the Canaries - which are further away from Barcelona than Barcelona is the UK - are on the list as well as mainland Spain, I simply don't understand," said Labour MP Chris Bryant, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group for Spain. "And there are many, many regions of Spain which have much lower infection rates than many areas in the UK. I think this has been terribly badly handled." Speaking on BBC Breakfast, local government minister Mr Clarke said: "We respectfully disagree with the Spanish government's position on this. "We have seen a very sharp increase in cases in Spain, a 75% increase in cases reported between the middle of last week and the end of last week. That's why we took the action that we have." He responded to criticism that the government should have given more notice, saying ministers received the data on Thursday and Friday "and we acted on Saturday". "I don't think really there could have been a much prompter turn around." Travellers returning to the UK from anywhere in Spain must now self-isolate for 14 days at a registered address. Following a report in the Daily Telegraph that the quarantine for travellers from Spain could be cut to 10 days if they test negative, a No 10 source told the BBC they were "not expecting any move on quarantine days reduction". Mr Clarke said "we always keep the quarantine rules under review" but "the position is totally unchanged". Asked about the newspaper's report that 10 Britons have tested positive for the virus after returning to the UK from Spain, Mr Clarke told the Today programme: "I can't say whether it's true or not. "What I can say is that there have been thousands of new cases in Spain over recent days, therefore it's an entirely plausible scenario that people have returned to the UK carrying the virus. Even if the risk is one that hasn't materialised, frankly it's one we need to close off." Holiday companies Jet2 and Tui were among those to announce sweeping flight cancellations following the UK announcement. EasyJet, British Airways, and Ryanair said they would continue to operate full schedules of flights to Spain, though EasyJet said its holidays would be cancelled for the next few weeks. Among the thousands affected by the change in travel advice was Tom Clasby, who had checked into an airport hotel near Stansted with his fiancée, their two daughters, and other family members, ahead of a holiday to Majorca. Mr Clasby, 26, was due to depart at 06:55 BST on Tuesday but now faces having to return home to Bury St Edmunds. "We're in a situation where we can't do anything yet and I don't actually know what to do. The poor little girls have been so excited for this holiday - it's the second holiday this year we've had cancelled," he told the BBC. "We are just very disappointed, the girls will be so upset." Image copyright Tom Clasby Image caption Tom Clasby said he was dreading telling his two daughters their Spanish holiday was cancelled Also affected was Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, who flew to Spain on Saturday despite knowing a decision on the quarantine policy was due. Mr Shapps said in a statement he would return to the UK on Wednesday in order to complete his quarantine and would return to work as soon as possible. People who do not self-isolate can be fined up to £1,000 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and those returning to Scotland could be fined £480, with fines up to £5,000 for persistent offenders. Labour has urged the government to step in to protect jobs in the travel industry. "The government's handling of this issue has been nothing short of chaotic. The airline industry and passengers need clarity," said shadow transport secretary Jim McMahon. Meanwhile, the Foreign Office has been criticised by MPs over its "slow" repatriation of Britons abroad at the start of the pandemic. It comes as a further seven people with coronavirus were reported to have died across all settings in the UK, according to latest government figures - bringing the UK's total number of deaths to 45,759. In other developments: Have your travel plans been affected due to the new government advice? Have you returned to the UK and are facing problems due to quarantine? Are you still stranded in Spain? Share your experiences by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk. Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist.