00:00 Turkey makes space history, plus the 20th anniversary of twin rovers on Mars and a flood
00:06 of news for future missions to the Red Planet.
00:08 VOA's Arash Rabasadi brings us more.
00:18 We begin this week on a launch pad at Florida's Cape Canaveral.
00:22 There private spaceflight company SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket on a trip to the International
00:28 Space Station, or ISS.
00:30 On board were flight commander and retired NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegría and
00:36 astronauts Marcus Wundt from Sweden, Italy's Walter Villadé, and Turkey's first astronaut,
00:41 Alper Geziragli.
00:43 The four flew as part of the latest commercial mission from Texas startup Axiom Space.
00:49 SpaceX's autonomous Crew Dragon capsule did the heavy lifting of guiding the crew to the
00:54 ISS.
00:55 Axiom typically charges about $55 million per seat on these trips.
01:01 This was the company's first mission where everyone on board had a military flight background
01:06 and represented a home nation, as opposed to Axiom's prior two missions where business
01:11 people paid their own way.
01:13 Once docked to the space station, Axiom Mission 3 crew members received a warm welcome by
01:18 their fellow astronaut hosts aboard the ISS.
01:24 Also this week, we celebrate the 20th anniversary of Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity sharing
01:30 time together on the Red Planet.
01:32 The robotic duo landed on Mars in January of 2004.
01:36 They found evidence that ancient Mars had water flowing on its surface and might have
01:41 been capable of sustaining microbial life.
01:44 More on that in a bit.
01:46 NASA planned the mission for 90 Mars days, which are about 35 to 40 minutes longer than
01:51 on Earth, but the dynamic duo outlasted that by years.
01:56 Spirit stayed in touch with the space agency until 2010 and Opportunity kept on trucking
02:01 through summer 2018.
02:03 NASA still has rovers Curiosity and Perseverance roaming the Martian surface.
02:09 Finally this week, that Mars water we promised to discuss.
02:13 Scientists say Europe's Mars Express orbiter may have spotted a whole lot of it frozen
02:18 under the Martian surface.
02:19 Its location on Mars' equator, not the polar ice caps like on Earth, is as much a surprise
02:25 as the discovery itself.
02:27 We don't expect to see a polar ice cap at the equator.
02:32 You know, it's as ludicrous on Mars as it would be on Earth.
02:36 But that's what the data are telling us, saying it does look like that.
02:40 Scientists say that if melted, the water ice discovery, believed to be nearly 4 kilometers
02:45 thick, could cover all of Mars with water roughly 2 meters deep or enough to fill Earth's
02:51 Red Sea.
02:52 But scientists add that at a depth of roughly 300 meters, it likely won't be that useful
02:57 for space explorers looking for water away from our home planet.
03:01 Arash Arabesati, VOA News.
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