Senator Anthony J. Portantino (D-Pasadena) has been recognized by the Alliance for Fertility Preservation, an organization of professionals who advocate for fertility preservation, which gave him a Trailblazer Award for his efforts to protect the reproductive rights of cancer patients. Portantino authored Senate Bill 600 which was passed in 2019. The bill mandates health insurance coverage for fe... More »
Sturdy legs are needed to absorb the impact of the heaviest spacecraft to ever touch down on the Red Planet. NASA’s Perseverance rover continues to rack up tubes filled with rock core samples for the planned Mars Sample Return campaign. The joint effort by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) seeks to bring scientifically selected samples back from Mars to be studied on Earth with lab equipment fa... More »
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter successfully completed its 54th flight on Aug. 3, the first flight since the helicopter cut its July 22 flight short. The 25-second up-and-down hop provided data that could help the Ingenuity team determine why its 53rd flight ended early. Flight 53 was planned as a 136-second scouting flight dedicated to collecting imagery of the planet’s surface for the Persevera... More »
NASA is sending a trio of miniature rovers to the Moon to see how well they can cooperate with one another without direct input from mission controllers back on Earth. A teamwork-minded experiment to demonstrate new technology, the CADRE (Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration) project marks another step the agency is taking toward developing robots that, by operating autonomously,... More »
A cutting-edge instrument called SHERLOC, which hunts for molecules potentially related to ancient life, played a key role in a recent study. In its first 400 days on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover may have found a diverse collection of organics – carbon-based molecules considered the building blocks of life – thanks to SHERLOC, an innovative instrument on the rover’s robotic arm. Scientists with... More »
As a tribute to Edward C. Stone’s scientific contributions and farsighted leadership, the W. M. Keck Foundation has made a gift of $4 million to endow a new faculty position at Caltech. The Edward C. Stone Professorship will sharpen the Institute’s competitive edge in recruiting and retaining radically inventive scientists in astronomy, planetary science, and related fields, and ensure that the sc... More »
The JP Blecksmith Memorial 5K will be held in San Marino Tuesday at noon to benefit a foundation created to honor the life of the Marine Corps second lieutenant killed while leading his platoon in Iraq. The run is the signature event hosted by the JP Blecksmith Leadership Foundation, created to perpetuate the legacy of Blecksmith — a San Marino resident killed in Fallujah, Iraq, on Nov. 11, 2004 w... More »
The intrepid rotorcraft may head skyward again within the next couple of weeks. The 52nd flight of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter is now in the official mission logbook as a success. The flight took place back on April 26, but mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California lost contact with the helicopter as it descended toward the surface for landing. The Ingenui... More »
Pasadena’s Brick City Boxing gym was burglarized for the second time in two months early Monday morning, with a thief stealing weights and workout mats. According to gym owner Joe Hanks, this comes after a previous burglary in May where the owner’s championship belt and title-fight gloves were stolen. Hanks revealed that several cherished items, including a championship belt, fight gloves, and a l... More »
While NASA’s Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter are busy exploring Mars, one-tenth-scale buildable models of them have begun touching down in homes around the globe. Developed in cooperation with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, a new LEGO Technic building set is based on the real rover and helicopter, which have been roaming through Mars’ Jezero Crater since landi... More »
