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A Falcon 9 loaded with Starlink satellites prepares for launch.
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Update: Sunday night's Starlink launch has been aborted. A backup launch window opens tomorrow, Monday March 1 at 5:15 p.m. PT. We'll have the livestream link here on Monday. The original article follows.
I received an email notification that the beta version of the high-speed internet service is now available in my area, which is significantly further south than the initial beta offering in Canada and the northern US. (I'm at latitude 36 degrees in the Northern Hemisphere. Vancouver is at 49 degrees.)
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It's a sign that the expansion of Starlink is on schedule, but Elon Musk's company needs to keep blasting more flying routers into orbit to keep growing and to meet the requirements of its license to operate from the US Federal Communications Commission.
SpaceX could launch its next batch of Starlink broadband satellites from Cape Canaveral in Florida as soon as Sunday night, its fifth Starlink mission of 2021 so far.
This particular set of Starlink devices has been delayed from launching at least nine times due to different technical and weather-related issues. That sounds like a lot, but delays are the name of the game with space launches, and it's far more unusual for a mission to never be postponed at all.
This next launch comes after the last Starlink mission ended with a lost booster that missed its landing on a company droneship and splashed down in the nearby ocean instead. The booster that is set to be used Sunday night will be making a record-tying eighth launch and landing. Even before the loss of the other Falcon 9 on Feb. 16, SpaceX opted to do another round of due diligence for this mission.
Standing down from this weekend’s launch attempt of Starlink from LC-39A for additional inspections before flying one of our fleet-leading boosters, as the team continues to drive toward a separate Falcon 9 launch of Starlink from SLC-40 at the end of next week. pic.twitter.com/UvF0TUteQz
Liftoff is set for Sunday at 5:37 p.m. PT (8:37 p.m. ET) from Kennedy Space Center. The weather looks favorable for the launch and landing on a droneship, as well as the attempted recovery of both halves of the fairing.
We will cover the livestream of the launch right here. It's set to begin about 10 minutes before launch.
Follow CNET's 2021 Space Calendar to stay up to date with all the latest space news this year. You can even add it to your own Google Calendar.
The giant canopy that helped land Perseverance on Mars was tested here on Earth at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
Test. Test again. Test again.
Testing spacecraft components prior to flight is vital for a successful mission.
Rarely do you get a do-over with a spacecraft after it launches, especially those bound for another planet. You need to do everything possible to get it right the first time.
Three successful sounding rocket missions from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia in 2017 and 2018 to test a supersonic parachute proved their worth with the successful landing of the Perseverance mission on the Red Planet.
After traveling 293 million miles (472 million kilometers), the supersonic parachutes, designed to slow the rover’s descent to the planet’s surface, successfully deployed and inflated. They made the smooth touchdown of Perseverance possible.
The descent stage holding NASA’s Perseverance rover can be seen falling through the Martian atmosphere in this image taken on February 18, 2021 by the HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. An ellipse indicates where Perseverance touched down. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
This mission required us to design and build a 72-foot parachute that could survive inflating in a Mach 2 wind in about half a second. This is an extraordinary engineering challenge, but one that was absolutely necessary for the mission,” said Ian Clark, the test’s technical lead from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “To ensure they worked at Mars under those harsh conditions, we had to test our parachute designs here at Earth first. Replicating the Martian environment meant that we needed to get our payload halfway to the edge of space and go twice the speed of sound. Sounding rockets were critical to our testing and ultimately our landing on Mars.”
Watch as NASA tests a new parachute for landing the Mars 2020 rover on the Red Planet. On September 7, NASA’s ASPIRE project broke a record when its rocket-launched parachute deployed in 4-10ths of a second—the fastest inflation of this size chute in history.
The NASA team tested the parachute three times in Mars-relevant conditions, using Black Brant IX sounding rockets. The final test flight exposed the chute to a 67,000-pound (300,000-Newton) load – the highest ever survived by a supersonic parachute and about 85% higher than what the mission’s chute was expected to encounter during deployment in Mars’ atmosphere.
“When the spacecraft successfully touched down last week, it was a great feeling of accomplishment for the parachute testing team,” said Giovanni Rosanova, chief of the NASA Sounding Rockets Program Office at Wallops. “Placing the test component in the right conditions with a sounding rocket was challenging, and the importance of the tests to the success of the Mars landing was an exciting motivating factor for the team. We are proud to have been a part of this mission.”
Suborbital vehicles – sounding rockets, scientific balloons, and aircraft – are great platforms for developing and testing spacecraft instruments and components. Spacecraft including Terra, Aqua, COBE, CGRO, SPITZER, SWIFT, HST, SOHO, and STEREO have heritage connected with suborbital vehicle missions.
This annotated image was taken by a parachute-up-look camera aboard the protective back shell of NASA’s Perseverance rover during its descent toward Mars’ Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021. Using binary code, two messages were encoded in the parachute: DARE MIGHTY THINGS and the GPS coordinates of an area by JPL’s visitor center. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Rosanova said, “One of the beauties of suborbital vehicles is that an instrument or its components can be flown, improved, and then re-flown. This can be done within a few years, providing the opportunity for scientists to work out the bugs before flying on a spacecraft.”
In the case of the Mars 2020 parachutes, the first flight was a test to see if the right conditions can be achieved during the flight to simulate what the parachutes will encounter descending through the Mars’ atmosphere. The second flight, 6 months later in March 2018, was the first full test of the parachute. The final successful test, conducted in September 2018, provided the results needed for the Perseverance parachute team to be confident that the design was ready for the Mars 2020 mission.
NASA is currently developing plans for a Mars Sample Return mission to retrieve the rocks and soil samples collected by Perseverance and return them to Earth. Teams are preparing to test concepts for the Mars Ascent Vehicle that will carry the collected samples from the planet’s surface.
Suborbital vehicles – either a sounding rocket or a scientific balloon – are being examined for testing the ascent vehicle. Wallops personnel are excited to be a part of this next step of exploring the Red Planet as we go the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
More About the Mission
A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Spacewalking astronauts ventured out Sunday to install support frames for new, high-efficiency solar panels arriving at the International Space Station later this year.
NASA's Kate Rubins and Victor Glover put the mounting brackets and struts together, then bolted them into place next to the station's oldest and most degraded solar wings.
They had to lug out the hundreds of pounds of mounting brackets and struts in 8-foot (2.5-meter) duffle-style bags. The equipment was so big and awkward that it had to be taken apart like furniture, just to get through the hatch.
Some of the attachment locations required extra turns of the power drill and still weren't snug enough, as indicated by black lines. The astronauts had to use a ratchet wrench to deal with the more stubborn bolts, which slowed them down. At one point, they were almost an hour behind.
"Whoever painted this black line painted outside the lines a little bit," Glover said at one particularly troublesome spot.
"We'll work on our kindergarten skills over here," Mission Control replied, urging him to move on.
With more people and experiments flying on the space station, more power will be needed to keep everything running, according to NASA. The six new solar panels -- to be delivered in pairs by SpaceX over the coming year or so -- should boost the station's electrical capability by as much as 30%.
Rubins and Glover worked on the struts for the first two solar panels, due to launch in June.
The eight solar panels up there now are 12 to 20 years old -- most of them past their design lifetime and deteriorating. Each panel is 112 feet (34 metres) long by 39 feet (12 metres) wide. Tip to tip counting the centre framework, each pair stretches 240 feet (73 metres), longer than a Boeing 777's wingspan.
Boeing is supplying the new roll-up panels, about half the size of the old ones but just as powerful thanks to the latest solar cell technology. They'll be placed at an angle above the old ones, which will continue to operate.
A prototype was tested at the space station in 2017.
Rubins' helmet featured a new high-definition camera that provided stunning views, particularly those showing the vivid blue Earth 270 miles (435 kilometres) below. "Pretty fantastic," observed Mission Control.
Sunday's spacewalk was the third for infectious disease specialist Rubins and Navy pilot Glover -- both of whom could end up flying to the moon.
They're among 18 astronauts newly assigned to NASA's Artemis moon-landing program. The next moonwalkers will come from this group.
Last week, Vice-President Kamala Harris put in a congratulatory call to Glover, the first African American astronaut to live full time at the space station. NASA released the video exchange Saturday.
"The history making that you are doing, we are so proud of you," Harris said. Like other firsts, Glover replied, it won't be the last. "We want to make sure that we can continue to do new things," he said.
Rubins will float back out Friday with Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi to wrap up the solar panel prep work, and to vent and relocate ammonia coolant hoses.
Glover and Noguchi were among four astronauts arriving via SpaceX in November. Rubins launched from Kazakhstan in October alongside two Russians. They're all scheduled to return to Earth this spring.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Spacewalking astronauts ventured out Sunday to install support frames for new, high-efficiency solar panels arriving at the International Space Station later this year.
NASA's Kate Rubins and Victor Glover put the mounting brackets and struts together, then bolted them into place next to the station's oldest and most degraded solar wings.
They had to lug out the hundreds of pounds of mounting brackets and struts in 8-foot (2.5-meter) duffle-style bags. The equipment was so big and awkward that it had to be taken apart like furniture, just to get through the hatch.
Some of the attachment locations required extra turns of the power drill and still weren't snug enough, as indicated by black lines. The astronauts had to use a ratchet wrench to deal with the more stubborn bolts, which slowed them down. At one point, they were almost an hour behind.
“Whoever painted this black line painted outside the lines a little bit," Glover said at one particularly troublesome spot.
“We’ll work on our kindergarten skills over here,” Mission Control replied, urging him to move on.
With more people and experiments flying on the space station, more power will be needed to keep everything running, according to NASA. The six new solar panels — to be delivered in pairs by SpaceX over the coming year or so — should boost the station’s electrical capability by as much as 30%.
Rubins and Glover worked on the struts for the first two solar panels, due to launch in June.
The eight solar panels up there now are 12 to 20 years old — most of them past their design lifetime and deteriorating. Each panel is 112 feet (34 metres) long by 39 feet (12 metres) wide. Tip to tip counting the centre framework, each pair stretches 240 feet (73 metres), longer than a Boeing 777's wingspan.
Boeing is supplying the new roll-up panels, about half the size of the old ones but just as powerful thanks to the latest solar cell technology. They’ll be placed at an angle above the old ones, which will continue to operate.
A prototype was tested at the space station in 2017.
Rubins' helmet featured a new high-definition camera that provided stunning views, particularly those showing the vivid blue Earth 270 miles (435 kilometres) below. “Pretty fantastic," observed Mission Control.
Sunday’s spacewalk was the third for infectious disease specialist Rubins and Navy pilot Glover — both of whom could end up flying to the moon.
They’re among 18 astronauts newly assigned to NASA’s Artemis moon-landing program. The next moonwalkers will come from this group.
Last week, Vice-President Kamala Harris put in a congratulatory call to Glover, the first African American astronaut to live full time at the space station. NASA released the video exchange Saturday.
“The history making that you are doing, we are so proud of you,” Harris said. Like other firsts, Glover replied, it won't be the last. “We want to make sure that we can continue to do new things,” he said.
Rubins will float back out Friday with Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi to wrap up the solar panel prep work, and to vent and relocate ammonia coolant hoses.
Glover and Noguchi were among four astronauts arriving via SpaceX in November. Rubins launched from Kazakhstan in October alongside two Russians. They’re all scheduled to return to Earth this spring.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
As Perseverance inspires the entire world about the thrill of visiting our nearest solar neighbor, Mars, it's easy to start fantasizing about what it will be like when human beings regularly live on the red planet in the future.
Between SpaceX and NASA, it feels reasonable that human beings will be living on Mars before the end of the century. The question is when they do, what will the first Martian cities look like?
Science fiction should never be used as an actual forecast for human culture, but it is a lot of fun to think about how sci-fi stories have imagined our future lives on Mars. Here are six of the best very best Martian cities, ranked not in order of livability, but instead, but pure sci-fi coolness.
6. Bradbury City - Mars trilogy
Ray BradburyGetty
There are several fictional cities in Kim Stanely Robinson's seminal SF books about the settlement of Mars — Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars — so it's hard to pick just one. But, if you have to choose only one Martian metropolis from his books, Bradbury City is the way to go.
Named for Ray Bradbury, who wrote The Martian Chronicles, Robinson's Bradbury City is designed to recreate a city in Illinois. Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois. The Martian Chronicles features several unlikely Martian cities, some made by humans, some made by Martians. But, in almost all cases, like in "Night Meeting," these towns and cities often have gas stations and pickup trucks.
5. Bowie Base One - Doctor Who
Bowie Base One in "The Waters of Mars."BBC
Not exactly a city per se, but certainly a great Martian settlement in the pantheon of science fiction — if only for its name.
In the 2009 David Tennant-era Doctor Whoone-off, "The Water of Mars," the Doctor battles a type of sentient alien water called "the Flood," that turns people into water zombies. Bowie Base One, in the Who-canon, is the first human colony on Mars, which leads to many, many others. Obviously, it's named for David Bowie and the song "Life on Mars."
4. Utopia Planitia - Star Trek
Paramount/CBS
In the 24th Century-era of Trek, most of the best ships in Starfleet are built at the Utopia Planitia Shipyards in orbit of Mars. The Trek franchise rarely visited Mars, although the final episodes of Enterprise Season 4 — "Terra Prime" and "Demons" — had a lot of action on the Martian surface.
Both Star Trek: Picard and its prequel, "Children of Mars," revealed that the shipyards weren't just in orbit of Mars, but also on the ground, which meant that a huge civilization population lived and worked on Mars prior to the Sythn revolt in 2285.
3. Londres Nova - The Expanse
Mars in The Expanse.Amazon
More than any other contemporary science fiction series, The Expanse— both the books and the TV series — have made a convincing projection of what a future Martian colony might be like.
The capital city, Londres Nova, is sometimes called "New London." In the reality of The Expanse, what makes the settlement of Mars so interesting is the way in which it eventually just becomes totally independent from the Earth to the point at which its government is basically in direct competition with Earth for the entire solar system's resources. By the future time period of The Expanse, Mars is basically an alien planet, populated by humans.
2. Mars Dome One - Babylon 5
Babylon 5 Mars Dome ONe.Warner Bros
Somewhat unique among science fiction, Babylon 5 started off with a lead character who was born on Mars, Commander Jeffery Sinclair. In B5, being from Mars isn't that weird, but the politics of Mars are integral to the overall story of the series.
Mars Dome OneWarner Bros.
Mars Dome One is the biggest city there, and yes, it's a giant dome. But, Mars Dome One and other cities in Babylon 5 are fascinating because unlike Earth, there's more of an underworld on Mars, including an underground railroad for rogue telepaths.
1. Chyrse - Total Recall
Mars in Total Recall.TriStar
The Martian city visited by Arnold Schwarzenegger's Quaid is by far the most memorable Martian city in science fiction, even if it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
In the Philip K. Dick short story upon which Total Recall was based, "We Can Remember It For Your Wholesale," the lead character never actually goes to Mars, at least not in the realtime of the story. The triumph of Chryse in Total Recall is the edgy naturalism of this future city. It's sleazy, dirty, and dangerous.
Can you grab me a copy of Mars Today?TriStar
In Blade Runner, you're told that humans have emigrated to a variety of other planets. Chryse in Total Recall is like the Martian city equivalent of Los Angeles in Blade Runner. You can basically imagine them existing in the same shared universe. Would author Philip K. Dick approve? Maybe!
CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA --
Spacewalking astronauts ventured out Sunday to install support frames for new, high-efficiency solar panels arriving at the International Space Station later this year.
NASA's Kate Rubins and Victor Glover emerged from the orbiting lab lugging 8-foot (2.5-meter) duffle-style bags stuffed with hundreds of pounds of mounting brackets and struts.
The equipment was so big and awkward that it had to be taken apart like furniture, just to get through the hatch.
"We know it's super tight in there," Mission Control radioed.
The astronauts headed with their unusually large load to the far port side of the station, careful not to bump into anything. That's where the station's oldest and most degraded solar wings are located.
Glover quickly began putting the struts together in the shape of a triangle, using a cordless power drill, and Rubins bolted the completed piece to the space station.
With more people and experiments flying on the space station, more power will be needed to keep everything running, according to NASA. The six new solar panels -- to be delivered in pairs by SpaceX over the coming year or so -- should boost the station's electrical capability by as much as 30 per cent.
Rubins and Glover had to assemble and bolt down the struts for the first two solar panels, due to launch in June.
The eight solar panels up there now are 12 to 20 years old -- most of them past their design lifetime and deteriorating. Each panel is 112 feet (34 metres) long by 39 feet (12 metres) wide. Tip to tip counting the centre framework, each pair stretches 240 feet (73 metres), longer than a Boeing 777's wingspan.
Boeing is supplying the new roll-up panels, about half the size of the old ones but just as powerful thanks to the latest solar cell technology. They'll be placed at an angle above the old ones, which will continue to operate.
A prototype was tested at the space station in 2017.
The views from Rubins' new high-definition helmet camera were stunning, particularly those showing the vivid blue Earth 270 miles (435 kilometres) below. "Pretty fantastic," observed Mission Control.
Sunday's spacewalk was the third for infectious disease specialist Rubins and Navy pilot Glover -- both of whom could end up flying to the moon.
They're among 18 astronauts newly assigned to NASA's Artemis moon-landing program. The next moonwalkers will come from this group.
Last week, Vice-President Kamala Harris put in a congratulatory call to Glover, the first African American astronaut to live full time at the space station. NASA released the video exchange Saturday.
"The history making that you are doing, we are so proud of you," Harris said. Like other firsts, Glover replied, it won't be the last. "We want to make sure that we can continue to do new things," he said.
Rubins will float back out Friday with Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi to wrap up the solar panel prep work, and to vent and relocate ammonia coolant hoses.
Glover and Noguchi were among four astronauts arriving via SpaceX in November. Rubins launched from Kazakhstan in October alongside two Russians. They're all scheduled to return to Earth this spring.
------
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
The Mars rover Perseverance captured a photo on February 18, 2021, of its own descent stage crashing onto Mars’ surface and triggering a plume of smoke. Image via NASA.
One of the coolest shots we’ve seen from Perseverance on Mars so far came from the day of its successful landing, February 18, 2021. Minutes after landing, Perseverance managed to look off into the distance and capture an image of its own descent stage crash landing on Mars’ surface.
What’s the descent stage? Its role in Perseverance’s landing was brief, but vital. The descent stage is the rocket-powered section that deployed after the parachute. It was needed in part because Mars’ atmosphere is so thin that parachutes alone can’t guarantee a soft-enough landing. The descent stage kept the rover steady just above Mars’ surface, as the rover was deployed to Mars’ surface via cables. The descent stage wasn’t designed to land safely. After deploying the rover, it flew some distance off and crashed itself. That’s what Perseverance captured in this image.
Perseverance is busy on Mars examining its environs and recording all that it sees. It reports its findings with an anthropomorphized – and adorable – Twitter account @NASAPersevere. Its tweet about the descent stage crash landing was one of its first.
A moment of respect for the descent stage. Within two minutes of safely delivering me to the surface of Mars, I caught the smoke plume on one of my Hazcams from its intentional surface impact — an act that protected me and the scientific integrity of my landing site. pic.twitter.com/bG4dekrbvJ
Artist’s concept illustrating Perseverance’s landing on Mars, via NASA.
As you may have heard by now – or realized yourself – Mars is the only planet we know that’s populated by robots! A total of 18 spacecraft have been put in orbit around Mars, eight of which are still operating. Of the Mars’ rovers sent to Mars’s surface, five are still operational: Sojourner, Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance.
One Mars orbiter, the European Space Agency’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, also captured Perseverance on Mars’ surface, at its landing spot. It managed to find the rover and the pieces shed on descent, then tweeted an image:
The rover is near the bottom center of the image, with the heat shield a dark circular spot in the upper right, the descent stage to the left (and in the plume photo above), and the white parachute and back shell bright on the surface at far left. You can see from the overhead view the large ridge between the rover and the descent stage that the rover is looking toward in the top image.
Since 1960, nine countries have sent missions either to orbit Mars or attempt to land on its surface, and many of them have crashed and burned, quite literally.
February 2021 saw three missions successfully make it to Mars, both in orbit and on the surface. Perseverance was one. The other two were the UAE’s Hope mission and China’s Tianwen-1.
Many spacecraft have tried to land on Mars but few have succeeded. Image via Al Jazeera.
Bottom line: NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance tweeted a photo of the resulting plume of smoke from the impact of the descent stage.
A gathering last week has led to a COVID-19 outbreak at a local student residence and the closure of the building to visitors.
There are six confirmed cases at Severn Court, at 555 Wilfred Drive, health officials confirmed Saturday. A Section 22 order was issued Saturday by Dr. Rosana Salvaterra, closing the building to visitors and requiring residents to self-isolate. Anyone who visited the building between Feb. 20 and 27 is asked to self-isolate and get tested if they show symptoms.
“Based on initial investigations, several of the exposures occurred during a private gathering on Feb. 20,” Peterborough Public Health reports in a press release.
"This outbreak is very concerning not only because it involves a variant of concern and could lead to many more cases and high-risk contacts, but because it was also completely preventable," stated Salvaterra.
The specific strain of variant is not yet known.
The privately run student residence, located near Fleming College, has about 200 post-secondary students as tenants. Salvaterra said representatives of the Severn Court Management Company have been working with health officials to contain the spread, as have Trent University and Fleming College.
The news comes as Peterborough Public Health reports eight new cases of COVID-19 in the area Saturday.
The health unit, which tracks cases confirmed in the city and county, Curve Lake First Nation and Hiawatha First Nation, reports that there have now been 635 cases of COVID-19 since last March. Of those, 582 have been resolved.
One of those cases has involved a COVID-19 variant.
There are currently 41 active cases. There have been nine deaths.
An outreak has also been reported at Empress Gardens.
Vaccinations at Curve Lake are scheduled over two days next week, on Wednesday and on March 6. About 1,000 residents who signed up are scheduled to get their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine over the two days.
Getting tested
More than 43,400 residents, or 29.3 per cent, have been tested at least once for the virus, the health unit reportes.
COVID-19 testing continues at Peterborough Regional Health Centre and at Northcrest Arena, both by appointment only. To book a spot, visit prhc.on.ca and at peterboroughpublichealth.ca.
Testing by Peterborough Public Health staff can also be arranged in the home by calling 705-743-1000.
Some people can be tested at the Shoppers Drug Mart at High and Lansdowne streets, by appointment. Call 705-748-6141 or email asdm614@shoppersdrugmart.ca to book an appointment.
This is specifically for people who meet certain criteria: Asymptomatic students, teachers and staff in schools and child-care settings; Residents or workers in long-term care homes; Visitors to a long-term care home; Residents or workers in homeless shelters; International students who have passed their 14-day quarantine period; Farm workers; Self-identified Indigenous people.
Neighbouring areas
There were three new cases reported Saturday across the area covered by the Haliburton Kawartha Pine Ridge District Health Unit Saturday, all three in Northumberland County.
No new cases were reported in Haliburton or in the City of Kawartha Lakes.
There have been 1,029 cases confirmed in the area since last March, with 53 confirmed deaths and 13 probably COVID-19 deaths.
A gathering last week has led to a COVID-19 outbreak at a local student residence and the closure of the building to visitors.
There are six confirmed cases at Severn Court, at 555 Wilfred Drive, health officials confirmed Saturday. A Section 22 order was issued Saturday by Dr. Rosana Salvaterra, closing the building to visitors and requiring residents to self-isolate. Anyone who visited the building between Feb. 20 and 27 is asked to self-isolate and get tested if they show symptoms.
“Based on initial investigations, several of the exposures occurred during a private gathering on Feb. 20,” Peterborough Public Health reports in a press release.
"This outbreak is very concerning not only because it involves a variant of concern and could lead to many more cases and high-risk contacts, but because it was also completely preventable," stated Salvaterra.
The specific strain of variant is not yet known.
The privately run student residence, located near Fleming College, has about 200 post-secondary students as tenants. Salvaterra said representatives of the Severn Court Management Company have been working with health officials to contain the spread, as have Trent University and Fleming College.
The news comes as Peterborough Public Health reports eight new cases of COVID-19 in the area Saturday.
The health unit, which tracks cases confirmed in the city and county, Curve Lake First Nation and Hiawatha First Nation, reports that there have now been 635 cases of COVID-19 since last March. Of those, 582 have been resolved.
One of those cases has involved a COVID-19 variant.
There are currently 41 active cases. There have been nine deaths.
An outreak has also been reported at Empress Gardens.
Vaccinations at Curve Lake are scheduled over two days next week, on Wednesday and on March 6. About 1,000 residents who signed up are scheduled to get their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine over the two days.
Getting tested
More than 43,400 residents, or 29.3 per cent, have been tested at least once for the virus, the health unit reportes.
COVID-19 testing continues at Peterborough Regional Health Centre and at Northcrest Arena, both by appointment only. To book a spot, visit prhc.on.ca and at peterboroughpublichealth.ca.
Testing by Peterborough Public Health staff can also be arranged in the home by calling 705-743-1000.
Some people can be tested at the Shoppers Drug Mart at High and Lansdowne streets, by appointment. Call 705-748-6141 or email asdm614@shoppersdrugmart.ca to book an appointment.
This is specifically for people who meet certain criteria: Asymptomatic students, teachers and staff in schools and child-care settings; Residents or workers in long-term care homes; Visitors to a long-term care home; Residents or workers in homeless shelters; International students who have passed their 14-day quarantine period; Farm workers; Self-identified Indigenous people.
Neighbouring areas
There were three new cases reported Saturday across the area covered by the Haliburton Kawartha Pine Ridge District Health Unit Saturday, all three in Northumberland County.
No new cases were reported in Haliburton or in the City of Kawartha Lakes.
There have been 1,029 cases confirmed in the area since last March, with 53 confirmed deaths and 13 probably COVID-19 deaths.
Those looking out at the night sky in Southwestern Ontario Friday night might have spotted a shooting star, or as it’s technically known, a fireball shooting across the sky.
This event was captured by several all-sky meteor cameras belonging to the NASA All Sky Fireball Network and the Southern Ontario Meteor Network, operated by Western University.
Peter Brown, Professor and Canada Research Chair of Meteor Physics Western Institute for Earth & Space Exploration, reported on Twitter the fireball was as bright as the moon and passed directly over Chatham, Ont.
Fireball as bright as full moon passed directly over Chatham, ON last night at 10:07 pm. Ended at 30 km height just N of Lake St. Claire near Fair Haven , MI. Fast (30 km/s) so very small or no meteorites likely. @amsmeteors@ScottWx_TWN#fireball 1/2 pic.twitter.com/AQkljeScsz
According to NASA, the video data shows that the meteor appeared 90 kilometres above Erieau on the northern shore of Lake Erie and moved northwest at a speed of 105,800 kilometres per hour, crossing the U.S./Canada border before eroding over Fair Haven, Michigan.
NASA reports the meteor was likely caused by a fragment of a Jupiter family comet, though an asteroidal origin is also possible.
The space agency estimates the brightest of the fireball combined with the speed means any fragment would be at least two kilograms and around five inches in size.
It's only about the size of a loaf of bread. But a high-speed, tough-as-nails camera created by a company in Minnedosa, Man., played an instrumental role in landing NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars last week.
"You could run over it, it could fall, you could throw it out your window. That's how tough they need to be," Canadian Photonic Labs president Mark Wahoski said of the camera used in the monumental landing on Feb. 18.
His company, based in the southwestern Manitoba town — population around 2,500 — manufactures high-speed cameras for industrial, scientific and military markets, according to its website.
It took years to design the Perseverance camera in a way that would allow it to withstand the planet's gravitational force — and snap images fast enough, Wahoski told host Marjorie Dowhos on CBC's Radio Noon on Friday.
"It's really hard to comprehend just how fast that is," he said. "They go anywhere from normal, 30 frames per second — like your cellphone camera — all the way up to 250,000 frames per second."
And the testing involved to make sure it's up to the task before it gets sent into space is just as complex.
One of the simulations involved sending a metal sled with rocket engines strapped on top of it down a five-mile railroad bed in California, Wahoski said.
Another saw a helicopter lift a parachute, tied to that same rocket sled, up thousands of feet in the air before sending the sled down the track.
"On one of the tests, they determined they had to make this particular part stronger. So without those tests, the lander probably would not make it," Wahoski said.
The Manitoba company's relationship with NASA dates back roughly 15 years, he said — but much of the work that's happened in that time has been cloaked in secrecy.
"A lot of it you can't speak about…. You do the test and you do the support and you move on to the next project," he said.
However, the attention around the Perseverance rover landing has been an exciting development, Wahoski said.
This photo provided by NASA shows the first color image sent by the Perseverance Mars rover after its landing on Feb. 18. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/The Associated Press)
Once the landing finally happened, he said he had one word to describe how he felt: awesome.
"We had to just reflect back and say, 'Oh gee, yeah, we did some of that.'"
Those outside in Chatham Friday night may have spotted a bright flash light up the night sky.
A fireball “as bright as full moon” passed over Chatham at 10:07 p.m.
Western University professor, meteor scientist and planetary astronomer Peter Brown tweeted a video of the event Saturday morning.
Fireball as bright as full moon passed directly over Chatham, ON last night at 10:07 pm. Ended at 30 km height just N of Lake St. Claire near Fair Haven , MI. Fast (30 km/s) so very small or no meteorites likely. @amsmeteors@ScottWx_TWN#fireball 1/2 pic.twitter.com/AQkljeScsz
Observers in Ontario, Michigan and New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania reported seeing the fireball. The event was captured on several all sky meteor cameras belonging to NASA All Sky Fireball Network and the Southern Ontario Meteor Network operated by Western University, a NASA website on the event says.
“At its brightest, the fireball rivaled the quarter Moon in intensity. Combining this with the speed gives the fragment a mass of at least 2 kilograms and a diameter of approximately 12 centimeters (5 inches),” the website says.
Data suggests the meteor was caused by a Jupiter family comet.
The fireball passed directly over Chatham and ended at 30 km height just north for Lake St. Claire near Fair Haven, Mich., Brown tweeted. He says given the speed there were likely very small or no meteorites in the event.
Stargazers were treated to quite the show on Friday night with a giant fireball spotted in Chatham-Kent.
Peter Brown, Western University professor in the astronomy and physics department, posted on Twitter on Saturday morning that the fireball ended at approximately 30 km in height just north of Lake St. Clair near Fair Haven, Mich.
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According to the NASA website, observers in Ontario, Michigan, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania reported the sighting at 10:07 p.m. EST.
“This event was captured by several all sky meteor cameras belonging to the NASA All Sky Fireball Network and the Southern Ontario Meteor Network operated by Western University,” it stated.
“A first analysis of the video data shows that the meteor appeared 90 km (56 miles) above Erieau on the northern shore of Lake Erie. It moved northwest at a speed of 105,800 kilometres per hour (65,800 miles per hour), crossing the U.S./Canada border before ablating 32 kilometres (20 miles) above Fair Haven, Mich.”
NASA stated the orbit of the object is “low inclination” and has an aphelion — defined as the point in the orbit of an object where it is farthest from the sun — near the orbit of Jupiter, and a perihelion — nearest to the sun — between the orbits of Mercury and Venus.
“It suggests that the meteor was caused by a fragment of a Jupiter family comet, though an asteroidal origin is also possible. At its brightest, the fireball rivalled the quarter moon in intensity. Combining this with the speed gives the fragment a mass of at least two kilograms and a diameter of approximately 12 centimetres (five inches).
This is an excerpt from Second Opinion, a weekly roundup of health and medical science news emailed to subscribers every Saturday morning. If you haven't subscribed yet, you can do that by clicking here.
Pandemic fatigue has turned to pandemic restlessness as the weather shows signs of improving and vaccines gradually roll out across the country.
Hope is on the horizon, but if last spring is any predictor of what lies ahead we can expect to see Canadians flocking outdoors in search of safe ways to gather as temperatures rise.
As more people get vaccinated, cases (hopefully) continue to decline and society slowly reopens, it may be time to shift our messaging away from strict one-size-fits-all public health guidelines.
There's no doubt people will want to congregate more as the weather improves, and experts say we should transition from an abstinence approach to one of harm reduction. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
Allow small risks to counter fatigue
Experts say officials need to start to shift their messaging and set out realistic parameters for socializing safely over the next few months or risk losing the room — or worse, pushing people to more dangerous behaviour.
Dr. Zain Chagla, an infectious diseases physician at St. Joseph's Healthcare in Hamilton, Ont., says guidelines need to shift in Canada to educate people on how to see their friends and family safely.
"Now that transmission is down, we need to start making some discussions on the trade offs," he said.
"Can you really realistically think that people can wait it out at home without any interactions outside of their household for another three months? Or can you at least start prioritizing and building in low risk stuff, so that you give people the sense of normalcy?"
Finding practical ways to alleviate pandemic fatigue and allow for some level of safe interaction in the coming weeks and months will be essential to keeping Canada on a downward trajectory with COVID-19 levels. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
There's no doubt people will want to congregate more as the weather improves, and experts say we should transition from an abstinence approach to one of harm reduction.
"If you gave people that opportunity to do things appropriately outside, how many cases would you then save from indoor activity?" said Chagla.
"If you allow them to take that small risk, you're preventing the people that are going to fatigue and say, 'Well, I'm just going to have my family over, we've been fine, we've been isolating for weeks, I deserve this,' and then have COVID transmission that way."
Outside is better than inside
Finding practical ways to alleviate pandemic fatigue and allow for some level of safe interaction in the coming weeks and months will be essential to keeping Canada on a downward trajectory with COVID-19 levels.
"People are tired of the sacrifices they've made, and for their mental health and physical health want to see other people and want to socialize," said Linsey Marr, an expert on the airborne transmission of viruses at Virginia Tech.
"Doing it outdoors is very low risk if you avoid face-to-face conversation with people, maintain your distance and avoid crowds."
Prof. Linsey Marr says going for a walk side-by-side, taking an exercise class or even having a beer with friends are all relatively safe outdoors when more than two-metres of space is maintained. (Ben Nelms/CBC)
Marr says going for a walk side-by-side, taking an exercise class or even having a beer with friends are all relatively safe outdoors when more than two-metres of space is maintained.
New research from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows the risk of indoor activities when proper precautions aren't taken.
A similar situation occurred in Chicago, where 55 people were infected with COVID-19 after attending indoor exercise classes despite physical distancing and some mask use.
The missing element in both of those outbreaks was ventilation.
"We should be opening up park spaces, we should be encouraging outdoor activities where people can gather and gather safely and converse and talk and just be with people," said Erin Bromage, a biology professor and immunologist at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth who studies infectious diseases.
"Recognizing that there is a small risk associated with it — but it's better than the alternative."
'Get creative' with public health messaging
Timothy Caulfield, a Canada Research Chair in health law and policy at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, said public health officials are walking a "tightrope" in communicating public health guidelines in the coming months.
"We have to figure out ways that we can allow people to live their lives, while still making sure that we're reducing the risk," he said. "And I think we need to engage people as part of the solution."
A recent research article published in SAGE surveyed several hundred Italian and French citizens under strict lockdown and found there was significantly less adherence to public health guidelines when people's concern about COVID-19 was waning, along with their trust in officials.
WATCH | Dealing with stress in this leg of the pandemic:
Physical distancing may save lives and protect people's health in a pandemic, but it has its own health impacts. With isolation and apprehension comes sleeplessness and stress. And the advent of new virus variants and the slow progress of vaccinations are making things even worse. 2:01
The World Health Organization released guidelines for fighting pandemic fatigue, focused on understanding people, allowing them to live their lives while reducing risk, engaging with them to find a solution and acknowledging the impact of the pandemic on their lives.
Caulfield says officials need to evolve their messaging with emerging scientific research and avoid being tuned out by the public by setting realistic guidelines for safely interacting.
"We need to recognize that we're really getting to a point where there's going to be profound complacency," he said.
"There is profound fatigue, and not just fatigue about the lockdown. I think there's fatigue about the messaging — people are sick of hearing about this stuff. So I think we need to get creative."
Variants make noncompliance higher risk
Bromage said he's concerned transmission could soon skyrocket due to increased interactions with warm weather amid the spread of variants.
"We're heading into March very soon, and March is when the pandemic really took off last year," he said. "I'm holding my breath, just sort of hoping that it's not a repeat of 2020 given the changing mobility that comes with the weather."
"What comes next is really uncertain. Do we roll back up again? Do we just stay at this level?" said Bromage. "Nobody really knows."
Chagla says we need to give people more low risk activities to do together in the near future, or risk people hiding their interactions with each other behind closed doors.
"A Zoom call versus seeing a very close friend with a mask in the park is slightly higher risk," he said. "But I think using it to allay fatigue is probably a whole lot better than the implications of just keeping people at home."
WATCH: The impact of stress, a year into the COVID-19 pandemic:
A physician and psychiatrist talk about the impact that stress is having on mental and physical health a year into the COVID-19 pandemic and what the longer-term effects might be. 6:10
Caulfield says officials need to re-evaluate public health messaging and explain clearly to people what's safe and what isn't.
"I do want to see recommendations on what they can do outside now and how they can enjoy the weather," he said. "Let's put a positive spin on this, letting them know that there are steps that can be taken."
With the emergence of variants, Chagla says the risk of people letting their guard down now is incredibly high.
"You've got to get people on your side for the next few months," said Chagla. "And realistically offering things to them, rather than taking things away, is going to be the way to do it."
To read the entire Second Opinion newsletter every Saturday morning, subscribe by clicking here.
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