Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan unveiled an ambitious 10-year space program for his country on 9 Feb 2021 that includes missions to the moon, sending Turkish astronauts into space and developing internationally viable satellite systems.

Erdogan announced the program, seen as part of his vision for placing Turkey in expanded regional and global role, during a live televised event laced with special effects.

He said Turkey planned to establish “a first contact with the moon” in 2023, when the country marks the centennial of the founding of the Turkish republic. The first stage of the mission would be “through international cooperation,” while the second stage would utilize Turkish rockets, Erdogan said.

Erdogan also declared Turkey’s aim to send Turkish citizens into space with international cooperation, to work with other countries on building a spaceport and to create a “global brand” in satellite technology.

Turkey established the Turkish Space Agency, or TUA, in 2018, with the aim of joining the handful of other countries with space programs.

Critics have questioned the government’s decision to spend vast sums of money on that goal at a time when the country’s economy is suffering. But supporters say a space program will provide jobs for researchers and is likely to reduce the brain drain of emigrating scientists.

Erdogan did not provide details on how Turkey plans to achieve its goals. (The Hindu)

Dubai: The Emirates Mars Mission team announced that the Hope Probe, which successfully entered the orbit of Mars last Tuesday, has sent the first image of the Red Planet.

Having traveled more than 493 million kilometers over the past seven months, millions in the UAE, the Arab region and around the world have eagerly awaited to see the first image taken by the Hope Probe, which will be immortalized in history as the first image of an Arab probe to reach Mars.

The picture is the first of more than 1,000 GB of new Mars data that the Probe will send back to earth and that will be shared for free with more than 200 academic and scientific institutions around the world.

For the first time, it will study the link between weather change and atmospheric loss, a process that may have caused the Red Planet’s surface corrosion and the loss of its upper atmosphere.

The mission will provide deeper insights into the climatic dynamics of the Red Planet through observing the weather phenomena in Mars such as the massive famous dust storms that have been known to engulf the Red Planet, as compared to the short and localized dust storms on earth. It will focus on better understanding the link between weather changes in Mars’ lower atmosphere, with the loss of hydrogen and oxygen from the upper layers of the atmosphere.

A successful fourth stage
The UAE made history on Tuesday evening, Feb.9, as the first Arab nation, and the fifth in the world, to reach Mars after the Hope Probe successfully entered the Red Planet’s orbit at 7:42 pm.

America’s space agency Nasa successfully performed a successful take-off and landing on Mars of its miniature helicopter Ingenuity early on Monday (19 Aprail), achieving the first powered, controlled flight by an aircraft over the surface of another planet. Nasa officials compared the event to the first flight by Wright brothers in 1903. The test flight took place at 3.30am US eastern daylight time on the floor of Martian land called Jezero Crater. The helicopter lifted up about 3 metres, hovered for 30 seconds, swiveled and then landed back on Mars, the space agency said.

In a video shared by Nasa on Twitter, engineers can be seen cheering in the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California as an image was transmitted back to Earth by the Ingenuity helicopter which showed its shadow looming over the surface of Mars during its flight.
(Hindustan Times)

Research shows that a new telescope could detect a potential signature of life on other planets in as little as 60 hours. “What really surprised me about the results is that we may realistically find signs of life on other planets in the next 5 to 10 years,” said Caprice Phillips, a graduate student at The Ohio State University, who will share preliminary findings at a press conference during the 2021 APS April Meeting.

Gas dwarf planets have the potential to foster life. But because none of these super-Earths or mini-Neptunes exist within our solar system, scientists struggle to determine whether their atmospheres contain ammonia and other potential signs of living things.

Phillips calculated that when the James Webb Space Telescope launches this October, it could feasibly detect ammonia around six gas dwarf planets after just a few orbits.

She and her team modelled how JWST instruments would respond to varying clouds and atmospheric conditions then produced a ranked list of where the telescope should search for life. (Hindustan Times)