Deep Space Atomic Clocks - Spacecraft Autonomy

The technological demonstration marks a major milestone in the development of robotic explorer navigation and the functioning of GPS satellites.

To figure out where they are and where they're heading, spacecraft that go beyond our Moon communicate with base stations on Earth. 

NASA's Deep Space Atomic Clock is trying to give far-flung astronauts greater navigational autonomy. 

The expedition announces success in its effort to enhance the capacity of space-based atomic clocks to measure time reliably over extended periods of time in a new article published today in the journal Nature.

• This characteristic, known as stability, has an effect on the functioning of GPS satellites that help people navigate on Earth, thus this research may help next-generation GPS spacecraft become more autonomous.

• Engineers transmit signals from the spacecraft to Earth and back to determine the course of a faraway spacecraft. 

• On the ground, they employ refrigerator-sized atomic clocks to record the timing of those signals, which is crucial for accurately calculating the spacecraft's location. 

• However, for robots on Mars or at farther locations, waiting for the signals to complete the journey may take tens of minutes or even hours.

• Those spacecraft could compute their own location and orientation if they carried atomic clocks, but the clocks would have to be very reliable. 

To assist us get to our destinations on Earth, GPS satellites contain atomic clocks, which must be updated many times a day to maintain the required degree of stability. 

• More reliable space-based clocks would be required for far space missions.

• The Deep Space Atomic Clock has been running onboard General Atomic's Orbital Test Bed spacecraft since June 2019, and is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. 

• According to the latest research, the mission team established a new record for long-term atomic clock stability in space, surpassing the stability of existing space-based atomic clocks, including those on GPS satellites, by more than ten times.

Each Nanosecond Is Mission Critical

All atomic clocks have some level of instability, resulting in a difference between the clock's time and the real time. 

• If not rectified, the offset, although little at first, quickly grows, and in spacecraft navigation, even a minor offset may have significant consequences.

One of the primary objectives of the Deep Space Atomic Clock mission was to track the clock's stability over time. 

• After more than 20 days of operation, the team reports a level of stability that results in a time variation of fewer than four nanoseconds, according to the new study.

• According to Eric Burt, an atomic clock physicist for the project at JPL and co-author of the new study, “an error of one nanosecond in time equates to a distance uncertainty of approximately one foot.” 

• “To maintain this degree of stability, certain GPS clocks must be refreshed multiple times a day, which implies GPS is heavily reliant on ground connection. 

• The Deep Space Atomic Clock can extend this out to a week or more, providing an application like GPS a lot more autonomy.”

The new paper's stability and subsequent time delay are approximately five times better than the team's last report from the spring of 2020. 

• This is an improvement in the team's measurement of the clock's stability, not in the clock itself. 

• Longer operational durations and almost a year's worth of extra data allowed them to increase their measurement accuracy.

The Deep Space Atomic Clock mission will end in August, but NASA announced that work on the technology will continue: 

• The Deep Space Atomic Clock-2, a better version of the cutting-edge timekeeper, will fly to Venus on the VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy) mission. 

• The new space clock, like its predecessor, is a technology demonstration, which means its aim is to improve in-space capabilities by creating sensors, hardware, software, and other technologies that don't exist now. 

• The ultra-precise clock signal produced by this technology, developed by JPL and supported by NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD), may aid autonomous spacecraft navigation and improve radio scientific observations on future missions.

“NASA's choice of Deep Space Atomic Clock-2 for VERITAS testifies to this technology's promise,” said Todd Ely, principle investigator and project manager for the Deep Space Atomic Clock at JPL. 

“On VERITAS, we want to put this next-generation space clock to the test and show how it may be used for deep space navigation and science.”

General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems of Englewood, Colorado supplied the spacecraft for the Deep Space Atomic Clock. 

It is supported by NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate's Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program and STMD's Technology Demonstration Missions program at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. 

The project is overseen by JPL.

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

Courtesy - NASA.gov

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NASA Asteroid Missions

Asteroid day is celebrated every day at NASA. We are constantly gazing to the sky, from expeditions to asteroids in our solar system – some of which even return samples to Earth – to attempts to locate, track, and monitor near-Earth objects and safeguard our planet from possible impact dangers.

Several ambitious missions to investigate unusual asteroids will be launched in the coming years. 

In October and November 2021 NASA will be launching, 

• The Lucy mission

• Lucy is the Trojan Asteroids' First Mission

• These primordial entities may contain crucial insights about the solar system's past, as well as the beginnings of biological stuff on Earth.

• The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission

• NASA has entrusted the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission to the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), with assistance from several NASA centers including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Johnson Space Center (JSC), Glenn Research Center (GRC), and Langley Research Center (LaRC).

• DART is a planetary defense-driven test of technology aimed at preventing an asteroid from colliding with Earth. DART will be the first time a kinetic impactor will be used to alter an asteroid's velocity in space. 

• The DART project is now in Phase C, directed by APL and administered by Marshall Space Flight Center for NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office and the Science Mission Directorate's Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC, under NASA's Solar System Exploration Program.

Followed by,

• The launch date for the Psyche mission is set for 2022.

• The Psyche mission will go to a rare metal asteroid that orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. 

• The asteroid Psyche is unusual in that it seems to be the exposed nickel-iron core of an early planet, one of our solar system's building components.

• OSIRIS-REx started its return to Earth in 2021 and is scheduled to arrive in 2023 with an asteroid sample in tow. 

• OSIRIS-REx has arrived at the near-Earth asteroid Bennu and is bringing back a tiny sample for examination. 

• The mission took off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on September 8, 2016. 

• In 2018, the spacecraft arrived on Bennu, and in 2023, it will return a sample to Earth.

• The Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) satellite observatory has also received a two-year mission extension to continue its hunt for asteroids and comets.

• It has verified infrared sightings of over 39,100 objects in our solar system to far.

• From December 2009 to February 2011, NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) was a NASA infrared-wavelength astronomical space telescope. 

• The spacecraft was revived in September 2013, renamed NEOWISE, and given a new mission: to help NASA in identifying and characterizing the population of near-Earth objects (NEO).

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International Space Station Sun Transit

The International Space Station, which has a crew of seven onboard, is silhouetted in this composite picture created from seven frames as it transits the Sun at approximately five miles per second on Friday, June 25.

Image Credit & Courtesy of: NASA.gov / Joel Kowsky

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Mars Robotics - Robotic Exploration of Mars

NASA's Mars Exploration Program (MEP) is managed by JPL. For many years, this program has been conducting a series of robotic missions to investigate Mars. 

• The success of the Mars Pathfinder, Mars Exploration Rover, and Mars Science Laboratory missions has shown that autonomous rovers can effectively and efficiently explore the surface of Mars and collect scientific data in small regions. 

• As a consequence, the MEP has created an ambitious long-term strategy for in situ exploration based on a consensus among top Mars scientists. 

• The hunt for past or current life on Mars is the highest priority objective. 

For instance, a JPL website addresses the question, “Why Explore Mars?” 

• Mars has the most pleasant environment in the solar system after Earth. 

• It was once so welcoming that it might have supported primitive, bacteria-like life. =

• Outflow channels and other geologic structures on Mars' surface offer sufficient evidence that liquid water flowed billions of years ago. 

• Although liquid water may exist deep under Mars' surface, the temperature is presently too low and the atmosphere is too thin for liquid water to exist at the surface. 

What caused the climate on Mars to change? 

Were the prerequisites for the emergence of life ever exist on Mars? 

Is it possible that microorganisms in the subsurface are still living today? 

 

These are the kinds of questions that motivate us to go to Mars. 

Mars' environment has clearly cooled significantly.... 

We must initially ask the following questions when we begin to explore the cosmos and seek for planets in other solar systems: 

Is there evidence of life on another planet in our solar system? 

What are the bare minimum requirements for the emergence of life? 

Four topics were prioritized by the Mars Exploration Program 

1. Look for traces of a previous existence. 
2. Investigate hydrothermal environments. (The chances of finding evidence of past and current life have considerably increased.) 
3. Look for the current moment. 
4. Investigate the development of Mars. 

The hunt for proof of previous life was the main short-term aim. If hydrothermal vents were identified (which they haven't yet), the search would be narrowed down to those areas. 

The hunt for current life would “follow on from previous orbiting or landing missions discovering that current Mars conditions have the capacity to sustain life.” 

Only if the... presently accepted theories for Mars' climatic history are wrong will the subject of Martian evolution be highlighted. 

If future missions show that there is no convincing evidence of wet conditions on ancient Mars involving standing bodies of water, as has been interpreted from orbital remote sensing to date, the program's current focus on the search for surface habitats will be lowered significantly — unless, of course, liquid water is discovered on or near the surface of Mars today. 

With this unexpected finding would arise the conundrum of how the terrestrial planets developed so differently, despite their striking resemblance. 

Liquid water, on the other hand, is unstable at Mars' surface temperatures and pressures. 

As a result, standing pools of liquid water cannot exist on or near Mars' surface. 

Liquid water might theoretically exist far under the surface, where temperatures are greater, and liquid water under pressure could sometimes rush up to the top owing to a subterranean event, where it would rapidly freeze. 

                                                                

The loss mechanisms and sinks for water and CO2 on Mars would be studied throughout time, as well as comparisons of the parallels and differences between the three terrestrial planets: 

Venus, Earth, and Mars. More than 130 terrestrial and planetary scientists gathered at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to study early Mars. 

The report's primary topic was the hunt for life on Mars. In their 26-page study, the term "life" appears 119 times, or almost five times each page. 

According to the report's introduction, "perhaps the single most compelling reason scientists find this early period of Martian geologic history so compelling is that its dynamic character may have given rise to conditions suitable for the development of life, the creation of habitable environments for that life to colonize, and the subsequent preservation of evidence of those early environments in the geologic record." 

“Did life emerge on early Mars?” was listed as one of the three “top scientific questions linked to early Mars.” 

“The issue of Martian life contains basically three fundamental aspects,” the study continues. 

• The first was the idea that Mars might have had its own separate genesis of life. 

• The second was the possibility of life developing on one planet and then being transported to another via impact ejection and gravitational capture (i.e., panspermia). 

• The third looked at the possibility of life on Mars having survived and developed after its first appearance. The study goes on to say that “how life starts anyplace remains a basic unsolved mystery,” and that “the closeness of Earth and Mars raises uncertainty as to whether Earth and Mars had genuinely separate beginnings of life.” 

Microorganisms may have been transferred between the two worlds as a result of meteoritic collisions, such as those that brought Martian meteorites to Earth. 

In the distant geologic past, impact events were much more common and significant, including at the time when life started on Earth. 

As a result, it's impossible to say if the finding of life on Mars entails the discovery of a genuinely separate genesis of life. 

Because liquid water is thought to be a required (but not sufficient) prerequisite for life to develop from inanimate materials, the Mars scientific community puts a high priority on finding evidence of liquid water's previous effect on the surface (it cannot exist there under present conditions). 

The hunt for evidence of previous circumstances that might have supported life on Mars is still a major focus of the mission. 

The key issue for Mars exploration, according to the MEP, is: Is there life on Mars? 

Among the many discoveries we've made about Mars, one stands out above the rest: 

the possibility of liquid water on Mars, either in the distant past or now in the subsurface. 

Water is essential because life exists nearly everywhere on Earth where there is water. 

If Mars previously had liquid water, and if it still does now, it's intriguing to speculate about whether microscopic life might have evolved on its surface. 

Is there any proof of life on the earth in the past? 

Is it possible that any of these small live organisms survive today? 

Consider how thrilling it would be to say, "Yes!" 

• The first science goal is to find out whether life has ever existed on Mars. 

• NASA will need to undertake multiple missions over the next several decades to determine if life ever existed on Mars. 

• Similarly, the hunt for life lies at the heart of NASA's exploration of other planets in the solar system and beyond. 

• A hunt for life on Titan, Saturn's moon, and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) using radio telescopes are among them. 

The focus on life in the NASA community has swayed a number of otherwise competent and even prominent scientists to develop programs, papers, and reports to analyze, hypothesize, and imagine the possibility of liquid water and life on other planetary bodies, with a particular focus on Mars—and the press has exaggerated these occasional musings. 

Mars scientists are under a lot of pressure to discover implications for water and life in their research. 

An interesting article reports on an interview with Steve Squyres, the project scientist for the Mars Exploration Rovers mission. 

The following are two extracts from the article: 

According to reports, Squyers believes the rovers would provide answers to two questions: 

"Are we alone in the universe?" and "How did life come to be?" 

Most significantly, they've discovered signs of water on Mars. There is life where there is water. It's hard to believe Squyres really stated this. 

How can the media say such ludicrous things? 

What proof is there that a planet with liquid water had life at some point? 

Isn't it possible to tell the difference between essential and sufficient? 

Although water is essential for life, is it sufficient? 

There is no proof that it is. And who in their right mind thinks the MER rovers will provide a solution to the issue of how life forms? 

This isn't science at all. It's the worst kind of pseudoscience. 

In regular news releases ascribed to renowned and competent space experts, the Internet is full with crazy erroneous claims. 

P.S ~ When did science go from proving hypotheses with measurements, cautious understated conclusions, and carefully verifying ideas before going public—to wild untested statements, baseless claims, and repeated press releases reporting nonsense?

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Mars Exploration And The Search For Life

The Apollo human trips to the Moon must be considered one of mankind's greatest technical accomplishments, especially given the rudimentary electronics available at the time. 

• That was undoubtedly the pinnacle of NASA's accomplishments. 

• Since then, NASA has been debating what should happen next in terms of people in space.

• There seems to have been a strong desire to get humans into space, which led to the creation of the Space Shuttle. 

While it is true that any human mission in space requires access, the problems with the Shuttle were that, 

(i) the development and operation of the Shuttle required so much funding that there wasn't much left over to support what humans would do once they did get access to space, and 

(ii) the Shuttle's reliability deteriorated over time, until the main goal seemed to be merely to land sat. 

Following the Shuttle, NASA began on the Space Station, which, like the Shuttle, proved to be a money drain while delivering even less value. 

Michael Griffin was the NASA Administrator at the time, and his perspective aligned with Robert Zubrin's: 

• The NASA budget allocates funding to its constituencies for technology development in the belief that if enough technical work is done, the building blocks for missions will be available (Zubrin 2014). 

• As Zubrin put it, "technology and hardware components are created in accordance with the desires of different technical groups" under this manner. 

These initiatives are therefore justified by the premise that they may be helpful in the future when large-scale flying programs are restarted. 

• In theory, if executed intelligently and successfully, this method has considerable value. 

• However, we know from experience that establishing and maintaining a link between technology development and mission requirements is difficult. 

Furthermore, the requirement to connect technology to particular objectives may suffocate innovation and hinder development on higher-paying technologies. 

• Griffin, unlike his predecessors, was committed to what Zubrin referred to as the Apollo Mode: first, a destination for human space travel is selected. 

• After that, a strategy for achieving the goal is devised. Following that, technologies and designs are created to put the strategy into action. 

• The mission is then flown once these designs have been constructed. 

Griffin's strategy was to choose a particular destination and devote a significant portion of NASA's budget to developing technologies to get there. 

• By rapidly phasing out the Shuttle and the Space Station and diverting NASA Center technology money to shorter-term initiatives directly meeting the requirements of his destination-driven mission idea, his goal was to establish a pool of resources inside NASA for executing his vision. Griffin made the decision to return to the Moon. 

• He most likely postponed a trip to Mars because the finances were just not available. 

An interview with Griffin may provide some insight into Griffin's thoughts (2010). 

• He said in the interview that the Obama administration's strategy "does not bring us out beyond low Earth orbit in a timely and efficient manner." 

• Transporting people to the Moon, he said, was an essential step toward ultimately sending humans to Mars. 

• He also said that "the Moon is fascinating in and of itself." “I believe the experience of learning how to live on another planet just three days from home is extremely valuable...” he said. 

• Griffin's objective, however, was not able to be realized due to a lack of funding in the NASA budget. 

• Griffin's Constellation project was hampered by continued funding for the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. 

Furthermore, after further consideration, the benefit of returning to the Moon seemed to be extremely speculative. 

President Barack Obama canceled the Constellation program in 2010, and NASA seems to have returned to a constituency-driven model since then. 

 

While NASA has made some crazy promises about sending people to Mars in the 2030s, beautiful PowerPoint slides do not seem to be enabling for this trip. 

• How, where, and when life emerged from inorganic materials is an unanswered question. 

• One fundamental piece of information we have is that life lived on Earth in a rudimentary form over 3 billion years ago (BYA). 

• This was discovered in dated strata using fossil remnants of early forms of life. 

What was the method through which lifeless matter gave birth to life in its earliest stages? 

Is there life beyond the solar system or somewhere in the solar system? 

All of these issues are subordinate to the main question: 

• Is the emergence of life from inanimate matter a probable (or perhaps predictable) process given enough time, a warm environment, liquid water, and a scattering of chemical elements from the lower periodic table? 

• Some scientists have used logic and creativity to concoct a broad range of possible scenarios for the emergence of life, many of which are based on little evidence. 

To this writer, they seem to be extremely questionable. 

• Science despises the lack of solutions to critical problems, just as nature despises a vacuum. 

• As a consequence, scientists have come up with a variety of "explanations" for how life started.

• There are many articles on livable worlds. Surely, there must be a large number in the different galaxies. But the issue isn't whether there are livable planets; there are. 

What is the likelihood that life would emerge spontaneously on such a planet? 

• The commonly held idea seems to be that any planetary body with enough heat, water, and a few components would spontaneously develop life. 

• Given this viewpoint, Mars seems like an obvious location to look for alien life. 

As a result, NASA's exploration missions are primarily focused on looking for life on Mars. 

But how likely is it that life will develop on such a planet?

Is NASA looking for an ephemeral fantasy with a very little chance of occurring?

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

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Is NASA On The Lookout For Aliens?

The hunt for extraterrestrial life is one of NASA's main objectives. 

NASA has yet to discover any convincing evidence of alien life, but it has long been investigating the solar system and beyond to help us answer basic issues such as whether we are alone in the cosmos. 

The astrobiology program of the agency studies the origins, development, and dispersion of life beyond Earth. 

NASA's scientific missions are working together to discover unambiguous evidence of life beyond Earth, from investigating water on Mars to exploring potential "oceans worlds" like Titan and Europa, to searching for biosignatures in the atmospheres of our cosmic neighborhood and planets beyond our solar system. 

Is there a chance that life exists anywhere else than Earth? 

There is a chance, if not a certainty, that life exists somewhere other than Earth. Science is motivated by a desire to learn more about the unknown - yet science is ultimately based on evidence, and alien life has yet to be discovered. We will, however, continue our search. 

Do intelligent extraterrestrials exist? 

There is no known evidence for sentient life elsewhere, intelligent or otherwise, based on study at the SETI Institute, examination of Martian meteorites, new discoveries of methane inside the Mars atmosphere, and other similar investigations. 

The hunt for life in the cosmos, on the other hand, is one of NASA's main objectives. 

NASA is in charge of the US government's hunt for alien life, whether it's here on Earth, on the planets and moons of our solar system, or farther out in space. 

How does NASA go about looking for life? 

The hunt for life at NASA is complex. The research approach for NASA's astrobiology program focuses on three fundamental questions: 

• What is the origin of life and how does it progress? 

• Is there life somewhere else in the universe? 

• What methods do we use to look for life in the universe? 

• Astrobiologists have discovered a plethora of hints to these major issues during the last 50 years. In addition to utilizing missions like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and the Hubble Space Telescope to look for habitable exoplanets, NASA's hunt for life involves using the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and the Hubble Space Telescope. 

• Missions such as the forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope will look for biosignatures in the atmospheres of other planets - finding oxygen and carbon dioxide in other planets' atmospheres, for example, may indicate that an exoplanet supports plants and animals in the same way as ours does. 

Is NASA on the lookout for technosignatures? 

Technosignatures are a kind of biosignature that is defined as any observable indication of living or dead organisms. 

• Technosignatures are technological indicators that may be used to infer the presence of intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos, such as narrow-band radio transmissions or pulsed laser searches for alien intelligence. 

The terms SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) and technosignatures are often used interchangeably. 

• NASA funds technosignatures research, but not ground-based radio-telescope searches, owing to NASA's policy of supporting astrophysical research using space-based assets. 

• NASA also sponsored a Topical Workshops, Symposia, and Conference to create a research agenda to prioritize and direct future theoretical and observational investigations of non-radio technosignatures, as well as to produce a publishable report that can be used to start creating a technosignatures library. 

Given that a planet may support life for billions of years before intelligent life evolves to create technology that can be detected from other solar systems – our own planet, for example, has only been creating detectable technosignatures for a little over a century – we have a much better chance of finding life if we look for other biosignatures instead of just technosignatures. 

Is NASA looking for or studying UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena)?

NASA does not go out of its way to look for UAPs. NASA, on the other hand, gathers significant data about Earth's atmosphere via our Earth-observing satellites, frequently in cooperation with other international space organizations. 

• While these data are not intentionally gathered to detect UAPs or extraterrestrial technosignatures, they are publicly accessible and anybody may scan the atmosphere with them. 

• While NASA does not actively look for UAPs, if they are discovered, it will offer up new scientific topics to investigate. 

• Scientists from the atmosphere, aerospace, and other fields may all contribute to a better understanding of the phenomena. 

Exploring the unknown in space is fundamental to our identity.

Courtesy: NASA.gov

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

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How Does NASA's Perseverance Rover Take Selfies On Mars?

The historic photo of the rover next to the Mars Helicopter turned out to be one of the most difficult rover selfies ever shot. 

The procedure is explained in detail in this video, which also includes additional audio. 

Have you ever wondered how rovers on Mars snap selfies? 

NASA's Perseverance rover took the historic April 6, 2021, picture of itself alongside the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter in color video. 

The sound of the arm's motors spinning was recorded by the rover's entry, descend, and landing microphone as an added bonus. 

Engineers may use selfies to evaluate the rover's wear and tear. They do, however, inspire a new generation of space aficionados: 

• Many members of the rover crew may recall a favorite picture that first piqued their interest in NASA. 

• Vandi Verma, Perseverance's lead engineer for robotic operations at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, stated, "I got into this when I saw a photo from Sojourner, NASA's first Mars rover." 

• Verma served as a driver for the agency's Opportunity and Curiosity rovers, and she was involved in the first selfie taken by Curiosity on Oct. 31, 2012. 

• “We had no idea when we snapped that first selfie that these would become so iconic and routine,” she added. 

• The rover's robotic arm twists and maneuvers to capture the 62 pictures that make up the image, as shown on video from one of Perseverance's navigation cameras. 

• What it doesn't show is how much effort went into creating the first selfie. Let's take a deeper look. 

Teamwork. 

Perseverance's selfie was made possible by a core group of approximately a dozen individuals, including rover drivers, JPL engineers who conducted tests, and camera operations engineers who created the camera sequence, analyzed the pictures, and stitched them together. 

It took approximately a week to plan out all of the necessary individual instructions. 

• Everyone was working on “Mars time,” which meant being up in the middle of the night and catching up on sleep throughout the day (a day on Mars is 37 minutes longer than on Earth). 

• These members of the crew would occasionally forego sleep in order to complete the selfie. JPL collaborated with Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) in San Diego, which designed and operated the selfie camera. 

The camera, dubbed WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering), is intended for close-up detail pictures of rock textures rather than wide-angle images. 

• Engineers had to order the rover to snap hundreds of separate pictures to create the selfie since each WATSON image only captures a tiny part of a scene. 

• Mike Ravine, MSSS's Advanced Projects Manager, stated, "The thing that required the greatest care was putting Ingenuity into the proper position in the selfie." 

“Considering how tiny it is, I think we did fairly well.” The MSSS image processing experts got to work as soon as the pictures from Mars arrived. 

• They begin by removing any imperfections produced by dust that has collected on the light sensors of the camera. 

• They next use software to combine the individual picture frames into a mosaic and smooth out the seams. 

• Finally, an engineer warps and crops the mosaic to make it seem more like a standard camera picture that the general public is familiar with. 

Simulations on a computer. 

Perseverance, like the Curiosity rover (seen taking a selfie in this black-and-white video from March 2020), has a spinning turret at the end of its robotic arm. 

• The WATSON camera, which remains focused on the rover during selfies while being tilted to record a portion of the landscape, is housed in the turret among other scientific equipment. 
• The arm serves as a selfie stick in the final result, staying just out of frame. 

• Perseverance is considerably more difficult to get to video its selfie stick in action than Curiosity. 
• Perseverance's turret is 30 inches (75 centimeters) wide, compared to Curiosity's 22 inches (55 centimeters). 

• That's the equivalent of waving a road bike wheel a few millimeters in front of Perseverance's mast, the rover's "head." 
• JPL developed software to prevent the arm from colliding with the rover. 

• The engineering team changes the arm trajectory every time a collision is detected in simulations on Earth; the procedure is repeated hundreds of times to ensure the arm motion is safe. 
• The last instruction sequence brings the robotic arm as near to the rover's body as possible without touching it. 

Other simulations are performed to verify that the Ingenuity helicopter is properly positioned in the final photo, or that the microphone can catch sound from the robotic arm's motors, for example. 

Microphone Onboard

Perseverance has a microphone in its SuperCam instrument in addition to its entrance, descent, and landing microphones. 

• The microphones are a first for NASA's Mars mission, and audio will be a valuable new tool for rover engineers in the coming years. 

• It may be used to give crucial information about whether something is functioning properly, among other things. 

• Engineers used to have to make do with listening to a test rover on Earth. 

“It's like your car: even if you're not a technician, you may hear an issue before you know there's a problem,” Verma said. 

The humming engines sound strangely melodic when echoing through the rover's chassis, despite the fact that they haven't heard anything alarming thus yet. 

More Information about the Mission. 

• Astrobiology, particularly the hunt for evidence of ancient microbial life, is a major goal for Perseverance's mission on Mars. 

• The rover will study the planet's geology and climatic history, lay the path for human exploration of Mars, and be the first mission to gather and store Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust). 

• Following NASA missions, in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), spacecraft would be sent to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for further study. 

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA's Moon to Mars exploration strategy, which includes Artemis lunar missions to assist prepare for human exploration of Mars. 

The Perseverance rover was constructed and is operated by JPL, which is administered for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California. 

For additional information about Perseverance, go to: 

mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/ 

nasa.gov/perseverance

Courtesy: NASA.gov

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

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Quantum Computing Hype Cycle

Context: Quantum computing has been classified as an emerging technology since 2005.

Because quantum computing has been on the Gartner Hype Cycle up-slope for more than 10 years, it is arguably the most costly and hardest to comprehend new technology. 

Quantum computing has been classified as an emerging technology since 2005, and it is still classified as such.

The idea that theoretical computing techniques cannot be isolated from the physics that governs computing devices is at the heart of quantum computing. 

Quantum physics, in particular, introduces a new paradigm for computer science that fundamentally changes our understanding of information processing and what we previously believed to be the top limits of computing. 

If quantum mechanics governs nature, we should be able to mimic it using QCs. 

The executive summary depicts the next generation of computing.

 

Quantum Computing On The Hype Cycle.

Since the hype cycle for quantum computing had been first established by Gartner, Pundits have predicted that it will take over and permanently affect the world. 

Although it's safe to argue that quantum computers might mark the end for traditional cryptography, the truth will most likely be less dramatic. 

This has obvious ramifications for technology like blockchain, which are expected to power future financial systems. 

While the Bitcoin system, for example, is expected to keep traditional mining computers busy until 2140, a quantum computer could potentially mine every token very instantly using brute-force decoding. 

Quantum cryptography-based digital ledger technologies that are more powerful might level the playing field. 

All of this assumes that quantum computing will become widely accessible and inexpensive. As things are, this seems to be feasible. 

Serious computer companies such as IBM, Honeywell, Google, and Microsoft, as well as younger specialty startups, are all working on putting quantum computing in the cloud right now and welcoming participation from the entire computing community. 

To assist novice users, introduction packs and development kits are provided. 

These are significant steps forward that will very probably accelerate progress as users develop more diversified and demanding workloads and find out how to handle them with quantum technology. 

The predicted democratizing impact of universal cloud access, which should bring more individuals from a wider diversity of backgrounds into touch with quantum to comprehend, utilize, and influence its continued development, is also significant. 

Despite the fact that it has arrived, quantum computing is still in its infancy. 

• Commercial cloud services might enable inexpensive access in the future, similar to how scientific and banking institutions can hire cloud AI applications to do complicated tasks that are invoiced based on the amount of computer cycles utilized now. 

• To diagnose genetic problems in newborn newborns, hospitals, for example, are using genome sequencing applications housed on AI accelerators in hyperscale data centers. The procedure is inexpensive, and the findings are available in minutes, allowing physicians to intervene quickly and possibly save lives. 

• Quantum computing as a service has the potential to improve healthcare and a variety of other sectors, including materials science. 

• Simulating a coffee molecule, for example, is very challenging with a traditional computer, requiring more than 100 years of processing time. The work can be completed in seconds by a quantum computer. 

• Climate analysis, transit planning, biology, financial services, encryption, and codebreaking are some of the other areas that might benefit. 

• Quantum computing, for all of its potential, isn't come to replace traditional computing or flip the world on its head. 

• Quantum bits (qubits) may hold exponentially more information than traditional binary bits since they can be in both states, 0 and 1, but binary bits can only be in one state. 

• Quantum, on the other hand, is only suitable for specific kinds of algorithms since their state when measured is determined by chance. Others are best handled by traditional computers. 

Quantum computing will take more than a decade to reach the Plateau of Productivity.

Because of the massive efficiency it delivers at scale, quantum computing has caught the attention of technological leaders. 

However, it will take years to develop for most applications, even if it makes limited progress in highly specialized sectors like materials science and cryptography in the short future. 

Quantum approaches, on the other hand, are gaining traction with specific AI tools, as seen by recent advancements in natural language processing that potentially break open the "black box" of today's neural networks. 

Cambridge Quantum's introduction of a Quantum Natural Language Processing (QNLP) toolset  demonstrated the new possibilities. 

• The lambeq kit, sometimes known as lambeq, is a traditional Python repository available on GitHub. 

• It coincides with the arrival to Cambridge Quantum of well-known AI and NLP researchers, and provides an opportunity for hands-on QNLP experience. 

• The lambeq program is supposed to turn phrases into quantum circuits, providing a fresh perspective on text mining, language translation, and bioinformatics corpora. It is named after late semantics scholar Joachim Lambek. 

• According to Bob Coecke, principal scientist at Cambridge Quantum, NLP may give explainability not feasible in today's "bag of words" neural techniques done on conventional computers. 

According to him, QNLP lays down a compositional structure on circuits. 

These patterns, as shown on schema, resemble parsed phrases on elementary school blackboards. 

Coecke told that current NLP approaches "don't have the capacity to assemble things together to discover a meaning." 

"What we want to do is introduce compositionality in the traditional sense, which means using the same compositional framework. We want to reintroduce logic." 

Honeywell announced earlier this year that it would merge its own quantum computing operations with Cambridge Quantum to form an independent company to pursue cybersecurity, drug discovery, optimization, material science, and other applications, including AI, as part of its efforts to expand quantum infrastructure. 

Honeywell claimed the new operation will cost between $270 million and $300 million to build. 

Cambridge Quantum said that it will stay autonomous while collaborating with a variety of quantum computing companies, including IBM. 

In an e-mail conversation, Cambridge Quantum founder and CEO Ilyas Khan said that the lambeq work is part of a larger AI project that is the company's longest-term initiative. 

In terms of timetables, we may be pleasantly pleased, but we feel that NLP is at the core of AI in general, and thus something that will truly come to the fore as quantum computers scale," he added. 

In Cambridge Quantum's opinion, the most advanced application areas are cybersecurity and quantum chemistry. 

What type of quantum hardware timetable do we expect in the future? 

• Not only is there a well-informed agreement on the hardware plan, but also on the software roadmap (Honeywell and IBM among credible corporate players in this regard). 

• Quantum computing is not a general-purpose technology; we cannot utilize quantum computing to solve all of our existing business challenges.

• According to Gartner's Hype Cycle for Computing Infrastructure for 2021, quantum computing would take more than ten years to reach the Plateau of Productivity. 

• That's where the analytics company expects IT users to get the most out of a certain technology. 

• Quantum computing's current position on Gartner's Peak of Inflated Expectations — a categorization for emerging technologies that are deemed overhyped — is the same as it was in 2020.

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

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