NASA's InSight Survived the Trip to Mars ー Now Comes the Wait for Results
*By Conor White*
The Curiosity rover is no longer alone on Mars.
NASA's InSight lander successfully touched down on the Red Planet Monday afternoon, but spectators will have months to wait before any results arrive.
"It's a 26-month mission," said Sarah Lewin, an associate editor at Space.com said. The first results from InSight's experiments are expected sometime in the spring.
InSight marks NASA's first mission to Mars since Curiosity began its journey in 2011. The launch was originally scheduled for 2016 before officials discovered a leak in the rocket's vacuum chamber. As a result, InSight missed its launch window. The delay and necessary repairs added almost $154 million to the mission's price tag, bringing it to a total cost of $814 million.
And even those years of planning didn't guarantee a success.
"Mars missions have like a 40 percent success rate across the world," Lewin said. "NASA is a little bit higher, so there was a definite chance it wouldn't work."
Now that it has safely landed, the probe will be responsible for drilling into Mars ー largely to determine the planet's composition. The robot will also monitor the planet for "Marsquakes."
"We've put a lot of things on Mars that are either orbiters, which are looking down on it, or rovers like Curiosity exploring the surface, but we really don't know what's going on inside," Lewin said.
Catching you up on what you need to know on March 25, 2022, with Ukrainian forces retaking Kyiv, 300 deaths reported from the bombing of a theater used as a shelter in Mariupol, U.S. regulators ditch a climate review of natural gas projects, the 94th Academy Awards, and more.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has announced the removal of the mask mandate in school and day-care centers for children under 5. If COVID-19 cases remain low, this change will take place on April 4th. Syra Madad, an infectious disease epidemiologist, joins Cheddar News to discuss.
A subvariant of the omicron COVID-19 variant called BA.2 is causing an outbreak overseas. Now, some health experts worry it could also lead to an increase in COVID-19 cases in the U.S. Dr. Amesh Adalja, infectious disease specialist and senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, joins Cheddar News to discuss.
Dr. Alan Kaplin, Chief Scientific Officer of MyMD, joins Cheddar Innovates to discuss how the MYMD-1 is on track to be the first FDA-approved drug to treat aging and age-related diseases.
Tyler Hayes, CEO of Atom Limbs, joins Cheddar Innovates to discuss how the Atom Touch prosthetic is different from other prosthetics on the market, and how the Atom Limbs team of former Apple and Tesla leaders are bringing innovation into this industry.
Nouveau Monde Graphite says it wants to power the sustainable energy revolution. The Canadian company is developing carbon-neutral battery materials to serve the growing EV and cleantech markets and is doing so via a mining and manufacturing operation in Quebec. Eric Desaulniers, founder, president & CEO of Nouveau Monde Graphite, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Health experts are warning an even more contagious subvariant of Omicron, known as BA.2, could soon lead to another surge in Covid cases here in the U.S. The variant has already driven cases to skyrocket in China and Europe, which has historically served as a preview to the pattern the U.S. has seen throughout the pandemic. This comes at a time when protection from booster shots is waning for most people who got them. Dr. Jen Caudle, Family Physician & Associate Professor at Rowan University, explains what we can do to protect ourselves against the new variant and how we should act as warnings of another surge rise.
Catching you up on what you need to know Mar 24, 2022, with NATO meeting updates, Ukraine retaking suburbs around Kyiv, the spread of omicron subvariant BA.2 in China, Google Pay launching a third-party billing option, and a 16-year-old is suspected of being the Lapsus$ mastermind behind hacks of Microsoft and others.
Cannabis producer Cresco Labs is acquiring rival Columbia Care in a $2 billion all-stock deal, creating the largest U.S. cannabis company by sales. The deal, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2022, is one of the biggest in the industry's history and would make Cresco the dominant player in a market projected to reach $46 billion in revenue by 2026. Charlie Bachtell, CEO of Cresco Labs, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Moderna announced it's seeking emergency use approval for its COVID-19 vaccine from the FDA for children under 6 years old. A former FDA associate commissioner and the president and co-founder of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest (CMPI) Peter Pitts joined Cheddar News to talk about the timeline, benefits, and risks that come with the approval of the vaccine. "We want to protect their parents and their grandparents and their caregivers and their daycare providers, so it's all about protecting not just the kids but all around the people that are surrounding those kids," he said.
