Spirit and Opportunity were sent to the Red Planet in search of signs of its hydrological history (and, therefore, potential past life). Spirit made perhaps its biggest contribution in 2007 when it uncovered a long-defunct hydrothermal system in Gusev crater, an indication that Mars was once home to both liquid water and an energy source, key ingredients for life as we understand it. But in 2010 it became stuck in a bed of soft sand and couldn’t reorient its solar panels in a way that would allow it to survive the Martian winter....

Pop quiz: When you last hit the grocery to stock up, what’s the strangest thing that ended up in your basket? Ten cans of a soup you can’t stand? Buns, no hot dogs? A carton of shelf-stable milk from a grain you’ve never heard of? It’s okay, no one is perfectly clear-headed when contemplating the unknown. I bought a pineapple. Perched atop five-pound bags of basmati and a mini-mountain of canned goods, it was a true oddity....

But now, those comments will appear on Twitter for some users outside of the Birdwatch pilot cohort. Keith Coleman, Twitter’s vice president of product, wrote in a blog post Thursday that a “small (and randomized) group” of users in the United States will soon start seeing messages corresponding to tweets the Birdwatch community flagged. These might offer additional context to a subject mentioned in the tweet right on your feed or link out to a fact-checking source....

The company posted the news on—you guessed it—Twitter, following up on an earlier note recognizing disappearing tweets as a “frustrating experience” the company was working to change. “A Tweet would move up the timeline as replies were added to the ongoing convo. Since some convos can evolve quickly, this made it so you didn’t see the same Tweet repeated in the TL,” Twitter posted in September. “Our changes will keep your TL fresh and keep Tweets from disappearing mid-read....

The $10-billion figure is less than half of the $22.5 billion the White House requested in March, which included funding for overseas initiatives like COVAX. The Department of Health and Human Services estimated in February that the country would need $30 billion this year to keep its COVID-19 response going—the Senate’s aid package is just a third of that. Half of the $10 billion will be designated for therapeutics like antiviral drugs and monoclonal antibodies, with the rest going toward vaccines, booster shots, and testing....

Last month’s flight demonstrated two key pieces of this technology: obstacle avoidance and navigation, and determination of safe landing areas. In the video, you can see the terrain map that the helicopter is creating with its optical sensors to make navigation and landing decisions. But the most interesting aspect is the radio chatter between the human pilots onboard and the other mission participants. At several points it is evident that they don’t know exactly what their helicopter is going to do next, but each time it comes up with a satisfactory solution....

Mayor Michael Bloomberg reached into a block of dust and grabbed the shears, which lasers built layer-by-layer earlier in the day. He later cut through a commemorative ribbon to open the 25,000-square-foot “Factory of the Future” in Long Island City, Queens. Running the new facility is Shapeways, a Netherlands-based company that lets customers upload bespoke 3-D designs, and then prints and ships the objects in the span of a few days....

The converted jet, selected for its excellent maintenance and flight records (and not for its perfect name), will be modified to fire LauncherOne rockets. These two-stage rockets were originally designed for Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo high-altitude plane, but the converted 747 will be able to carry a larger payload. Unlike the reusable dreams of other billionaire-funded private spaceflight companies SpaceX and Blue Origin, LauncherOne is expendable. The rocket will be slung under one wing, “adjacent to the position that has been used by other 747s to ferry a fifth engine”, according to the press release....

It was April 2020, early in the pandemic—before masks became like a second skin—and Rice assumed the minutes-long clip was just one of the many virus-conspiracy theories plaguing the internet. But telling people to soak in ambient light, breathe fresh air, and keep their immunity high seemed a lot more benign than advising them to guzzle bleach, snort cocaine, or even sit in a tanning bed. Besides, her aunt, an astute, college-educated woman, had posted the idea on her feed....

In a new study published in Science Advances, a team of German researchers illustrate how the southeastern flank of Mount Etna, Europe’s most active volcano, is sliding into the Ionian Sea. If that slow creep gives way to a rapid collapse, it could trigger disaster in the form of mega-tsunamis that threaten millions of people living nearby and on the Mediterranean coastlines. It’s no secret that Mount Etna, sitting 10,000 feet high along Sicily’s northeastern edges, is in rough shape....

The tanks, fearsome in battle, are less graceful than penguins when playing in the snow. The clip comes from AiirSource Military, who note “The training exercise is designed to improve U.S. Marine Corps capability to operate in cold-weather environments.” Indeed, it appears there are improvements to make. Watch the full video, including several other armored and tracked vehicles, below:

In preparation for a hypothetical trip to Mars, NASA wants to send astronauts to visit a nearby asteroid. The controversial proposed Asteroid Redirect Mission tentatively scheduled for sometime in the “2020s” would give astronauts an excuse to take a ride on NASA’s Space Launch System and Orion capsule, which are currently in development, while also letting humans explore an asteroid for the first time. Unlike Mars, asteroids don’t have a lot of gravity, and the “asteroid” that the astronauts would visit is really just a 6-foot boulder at best....

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While eagles and falcons have made a remarkable recovery and continue to grow in numbers, a new study reveals a greater crisis, renewing Carlson’s message about our ability to destroy nature. In the United States and Canada, almost three billion birds have been lost since 1970—or about 29 percent of birds that once lived in those countries. “It’s really quite frightening,” says Rachel Buxton, conservation biologist at Carleton University, who was not involved in the research....

The basic construction of the new super-stretchy wires is an elastic tube filled with a highly conductive liquid metal alloy. Other attempts at stretchy wires, say the researchers, have relied on embedding conductivity into elastic, as opposed to separating them. The wires can be stretched up to eight times their original length, which is pretty amazing–an order of magnitude more stretchy than existing stretchy wires. The paper appears in Advanced Functional Materials....

However, the lander’s cold fate has evoked an outpouring of netizen love. Wired hosted a pithy epitaph contest to mark the occasion. Phoenix also polished its geek credentials by guest-blogging for Gizmodo about its mission. Readers can still catch Phoenix‘s personal Twitter stream from the popular social networking site, complete with robotic tweets such “Space exploration FTW!” Personable messages from a robotic spacecraft may sound quaint, but space exploration is indeed a winner here....

What are you eating and/or cooking for Thanksgiving? There are three managers at my restaurant, and we each pick a major holiday to get off. The past few years I’ve gotten Thanksgiving and gone to Boston, where my older brother lives. So my brother actually does the bulk of the cooking — which is a nice thing to do for the little sister who’s a chef. One thing that I’m known for doing on Thanksgiving comes from something my mom used to make....

First, though, he had to deal with ­Mission Control. Anderson had come aboard the ISS with the explicit goal of improving procedures for future crews; his work on the ground had included astronaut support and communications. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that he regularly felt annoyed by the tedious processes Houston demanded he follow. In preparation for the shuttle’s arrival, for instance, they had instructed him to remove a special spacewalk bag (storage for equipment like gloves and eyeglasses) from the airlock, place it in a second bag, take a new spacewalk bag from the arriving crew, remove the old bag from the outer bag, and give it to the new arrivals to put in the shuttle....

The plastic recycling process is a complex and energy-intensive endeavor popularized by the plastics industry itself. In many cases, it is unclear whether “recyclable” products even have a lesser environmental toll than non-recyclable plastic. However, reducing the amount of plastic waste can still help prevent wildlife deaths, modestly reduce the size of landfills, and prevent harmful chemicals and microplastic particles from entering the environment. For these reasons, it’s worthwhile to recycle the plastic items that you’re able to, rather than just tossing them in the trash....

Most models of Omicron’s spread now agree that, nationally, the surge is likely to hit its high-water mark sometime before the end of January. But in Michigan and Idaho, health officials are warning that cases are rising faster than they can track. What does it mean, then, for a pandemic wave to peak, given this patchwork mix of spiking and dropping cases nationwide? In a basic sense, a peak is the moment when day-over-day COVID infections begin to decline in a sustained way....