AP: The coelacanth — a giant weird fish still around from dinosaur times — can live for 100 years, a new study found.



These slow-moving, people-sized fish of the deep, nicknamed a “living fossil,” are the opposite of the live fast, die young mantra. These nocturnal fish grow at an achingly slow pace.



Females don’t hit sexual maturity until their late 50s, the study said, while male coelacanths are sexually mature at 40 to 69 years. And maybe strangest of all, researchers figure pregnancy in the fish lasts about five years.



Coelacanths, which have been around for 400 million years, were thought extinct until they were found alive in 1938 off South Africa. Scientists long believed coelacanths live about 20 years. But by applying a standard technique for dating commercial fish, French scientists calculated they actually live close to a century, according to a study in Thursday’s Current Biology.



Coelacanths are so endangered that scientists can only study specimens already caught and dead.



In the past, scientists calculated fish ages by counting big lines on a specific coelacanth scale. But the French scientists found they were missing smaller lines that could only be seen using polarized light — the technique used to figure out the age of commercial fish.



Study co-author Bruno Ernande, a marine evolutionary ecologist at France’s marine research institute, said polarized light revealed five smaller lines for every big one. The researchers concluded the smaller lines better correlated to a year of coelacanth age — and that indicated their oldest specimen was 84 years old.



Using the technique, the scientists studied two embryos and calculated the largest was five years old and the youngest was nine years old. So, Ernande said, they figured pregnancy lasts at least five years in coelacanths, which have live births.



That five-year gestation is “very strange” for fish or any animal, said Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Harold Walker, who wasn’t part of the research.



Even though coelacanths are unrelated genetically and show wide evolutionary differences, they age slowly like other dwellers of the deep, sharks and rays, Ernande said. “They might have evolved similar life histories because they are sharing similar type habitats,” he said.

Weird ‘living fossil’ fish lives 100 years, pregnant for five

(BBC): As many said at the time, bird song did sound different during lockdown, according to a scientific study.



By analysing the calls of sparrows recorded over decades, scientists confirmed a change in the birds' vocal repertoire when the city fell quiet.



The birds upped the quality of their songs, as they called to defend their territory and entice a mate.



And while it might have seemed to human ears that bird song got louder, the sparrows actually sang more quietly.



These sweeter, softer songs carried further given the lack of background noise.



Dr Elizabeth Derryberry of the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, US, has studied for years how noise pollution affects bird song.



"People were right that birds did sound different during the shutdown and they filled the soundscape that we basically abandoned," she told BBC News.



"As we moved out of the soundscape, the birds moved in and I think this tells us something about just how big an effect we have on birdsong and on communication, especially in cities."



What did the study show? Thanks to a long-running study of the songs of white-crowned sparrows living in and around the San Francisco Bay area, scientists were able to compare effects before and during lockdown.



What they found came as a bit of a surprise. Most of the time, it's male sparrows that sing, and during the silence the birds improved their vocal performance and sang lower-amplitude "sexier" songs to defend their territory and woo a female.



"When noise levels dropped during the shutdown, their songs actually sounded sexier to other birds in the population," said Dr Derryberry.



It shows how quickly nature can recover from the effects of human noise pollution, she added.



"This study shows that when you reduce noise pollution there's almost an immediate effect on wildlife behaviour and that's really exciting because so many things that we do to try to help the environment take a long time to improve."



A 'silent spring'? The lockdown was in effect a natural experiment in how wildlife responded to human-generated noise.



Traffic levels across the Golden Gate Bridge fell to levels similar to the 1950s and it was reported on social media that coyotes were seen wandering across.



Much has been written about the connection people felt with nature during the lockdown. And this study provides some evidence that both wildlife and human benefitted from the "silent spring".



"It improves your state of being and mental health to be able to hear more birds and I think the shutdown highlighted that, and this study provided some data to support that," said Dr Derryberry.



What do we know about the sparrow's songs? The white-crowned sparrow, which has distinctive white and black head stripes, is found across much of the US and Canada, where its songs have been widely studied.



Different sub-species across the country sing slightly different songs, known for the sweet, whistling introduction, a succession of jumbled whistles, and a trill near the end.



The sparrows of the San Francisco Bay area have been recorded since the 1970s, creating a rare historical record of song behaviour.



It's well known that birds living in cities have had to adjust their songs in recent decades, much like people having to talk louder at a crowded party. This is known scientifically as the Lombard, or cocktail party effect.



The study, published in Science, was carried out in collaboration with experts at Texas A&amp;M University-San Antonio, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and George Mason University, Fairfax.

How lockdown birds sang to a different tune

(BBC): China has released the first pictures taken by its Zhurong rover on Mars.



The forward view shows the landscape ahead of the robot as it sits on its landing platform; the rear-looking image reveals Zhurong's solar panels.



The rover touched down on the Red Planet early on Sunday, Beijing time.



In doing so, it made China only the second nation - after America - to successfully put a probe on the surface of Mars and operate it for a significant length of time.



Chinese scientists hope get at least 90 Martian days of service out of the six-wheeled robot at its location on Utopia Planitia, a vast terrain in the planet's northern hemisphere.



Zhurong looks a lot like the US space agency's (Nasa) Spirit and Opportunity vehicles from the 2000s.



It weighs some 240kg. A tall mast carries cameras to take pictures and aid navigation; five additional instruments will investigate the mineralogy of local rocks and the general nature of the environment, including the weather.



Like the current American rovers (Curiosity and Perseverance), Zhurong has a laser tool to zap rocks to assess their chemistry. It also has a radar to look for sub-surface water-ice - a capability its American cousins don't share.



Utopia Planitia is where Nasa landed its Viking-2 mission in 1976.



It's a colossal basin - more than 3,000km across - that was formed by an impact early in Mars' history.



There is some evidence pointing to it having held an ocean long ago.



Remote sensing by satellites indicates there are significant stores of ice at depth.



America put down the much larger (one tonne) Perseverance robot in February.



Europe, which has twice failed with landing attempts, will send a rover called Rosalind Franklin to Mars next year (in a joint project with the Russians).

China on Mars: Zhurong rover returns first pictures

NEW DELHI (AP): A potentially worrisome variant of the coronavirus detected in India may spread more easily. But the country is behind in doing the kind of testing needed to track it and understand it better.



On Monday, the World Health Organization designated the new version of the virus a “variant of concern” based on preliminary research, alongside those that were first detected in Britain, South Africa and Brazil but have spread to other countries.



“We need much more information about this virus variant,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead for COVID-19. “We need more sequencing, targeted sequencing to be done and to be shared in India and elsewhere so that we know how much of this virus is circulating.”



Viruses mutate constantly, and the surge in infections here has resulted in more opportunities for new versions to emerge.



But India was slow to start the genetic monitoring needed to see if those changes were happening and if they were making the coronavirus more infectious or deadly.



Such variants also need to be monitored to see if mutations help the virus escape the immune system, potentially leading to reinfections or making vaccines less effective. For now, the WHO stressed that COVID-19 vaccines are effective at preventing disease and death in people infected with the variant.



Indian scientists say their work has been hindered by bureaucratic obstacles and the government’s reluctance to share vital data. India is sequencing around 1% of its total cases, and not all of the results are uploaded to the global database of coronavirus genomes.



When there isn’t enough sequencing, there will be blind spots and more worrisome mutations could go undetected until they’re widespread, said Alina Chan, a postdoctoral researcher at Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard who is tracking global sequencing efforts.



Ravindra Gupta, a professor of clinical microbiology at the University of Cambridge, said: “It has all the hallmarks of the virus that we should be worried about.”



First detected in the coastal Maharashtra state last year, the new variant has now been found in samples in 19 of the 27 states surveyed. Meanwhile a variant first detected in Britain has declined in India in the past 45 days.



Indian health officials have cautioned that it is too soon to attribute the nation’s surge solely to such variants. Experts point out that the spread was catalyzed by government decisions to not pause religious gatherings and crowded election rallies.



Dr. Gagandeep Kang, who studies microorganisms at Christian Medical College at Vellore in southern India, said researchers need to figure out if the variant is capable of infecting those who previously had COVID-19 and, if so, whether it could result in severe disease.



“I don’t get why people don’t see this as important,” she said.



Sequencing efforts in India have been haphazard. The country uploads 0.49 sequences per 1,000 cases to GISAID, a global data sharing effort, Chan said. The U.S., which had its own troubles with genetic monitoring, uploads about 10 in 1,000, while the U.K. does so for about 82 per 1,000 cases.



Late last year, Indian government institutions were ordered to buy domestic raw materials wherever possible, in keeping with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s goal of turning India “self-reliant.” This proved impossible, since all materials for sequencing were imported, resulting in more paperwork, said Anurag Agarwal, the director of the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology. The obstacles were most pronounced between September and December, he said, but his lab was able to find workarounds and continued sequencing.



Other labs didn’t, and scientists said that should have been when India ramped up its sequencing, because cases were declining at the time.



Even after a federal effort started in Jan. 18, bringing together 10 labs that can sequence 7,500 samples weekly, the actual work didn’t start until mid-February due to other logistical issues, said Dr. Shahid Jameel, a virologist who chairs the scientific advisory group advising the consortium.



By then, India’s cases had begun spiking.



Jameel said India has sequenced around 20,000 samples, but only 15,000 were publicly reported because some were missing vital data. Until late last month, a third of the samples sent by states were unusable, he said.



And now, the raging virus has infected many of the staff in the labs doing the work.



“Many of our labs are facing this problem,” he said.

Scientists race to study variants in India as cases explode

(BBC): Debris from a Chinese rocket that had been hurtling back towards Earth has disintegrated over the Indian Ocean, China says.



The bulk of the rocket was destroyed during the re-entry, but parts landed at a location 72.47° East and 2.65° North, Chinese state-run media reported.



The point lies west of the Maldives.



US and European tracking sites had been monitoring the uncontrolled fall of the Long March-5b vehicle.



Chinese state media said parts of the rocket re-entered the atmosphere at 10:24 Beijing time (02:24 GMT) on Sunday.



US Space Command said in a statement that it could "confirm the Chinese Long March-5b re-entered over the Arabian Peninsula". It was "unknown if the debris impacted land or water," the agency said.



Ahead of the rocket's re-entry there were fears that debris could come down in an inhabited area. US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said China had been negligent in letting the rocket fall out of orbit.



However, space experts had predicted that the chances of anyone actually being hit by a piece of space junk were very small, not least because so much of the Earth's surface is covered by ocean, and huge land areas are uninhabited.



The main segment from the Long March-5b vehicle was used to launch the first module of China's new space station last month.



At 18 tonnes it is one of the largest items in decades to have an undirected dive into the atmosphere.



The US said last week it was watching the path of the object - but had no plans to shoot it down.



Various space debris modelling experts had pointed to late Saturday or early Sunday (GMT) as the likely moment of re-entry.



The experts predicted that most of the vehicle would burn up during its final plunge through the atmosphere, although there was always the possibility that metals with high melting points, and other resistant materials, could survive to the Earth's surface.



When a similar core stage returned to Earth a year ago, piping assumed to be from the rocket was identified on the ground in Ivory Coast, Africa.



China has bridled at the suggestion that it has been negligent in allowing the uncontrolled return of so large an object.



Commentary in the country's media had described Western reports about the potential hazards involved as "hype" and predicted the debris would fall somewhere in international waters.

China rocket debris 'disintegrates over Indian Ocean' - Chinese media

BBC: Debris from a Chinese rocket is expected to fall back to Earth in an uncontrolled re-entry this weekend.



The main segment from the Long March-5b vehicle was used to launch the first module of China's new space station last month.



At 18 tonnes it is one of the largest items in decades to have an undirected dive into the atmosphere.



The US on Thursday said it was watching the path of the object but currently had no plans to shoot it down.



"We're hopeful that it will land in a place where it won't harm anyone," US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said. "Hopefully in the ocean, or someplace like that."



Various space debris modelling experts are pointing to late Saturday or early Sunday (GMT) as the likely moment of re-entry. However, such projections are always highly uncertain.



Originally injected into an elliptical orbit approximately 160km by 375km above Earth's surface on 29 April, the Long March-5b core stage has been losing height ever since.



Just how quickly the core's orbit will continue to decay will depend on the density of air it encounters at altitude and the amount of drag this produces. These details are poorly known.



China has bridled at the suggestion that it has been negligent in allowing the uncontrolled return of so large an object. Commentary in the country's media has described Western reports about the potential hazards involved as "hype" and predicted the debris will likely fall somewhere in international waters.



The Global Times quoted aerospace expert Song Zhongping who added that China's space monitoring network would keep a close watch and take necessary measures should damage occur.



But the respected cataloguer of space activity, Jonathan McDowell from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, US, said the situation did reflect poorly on China.



"It is indeed seen as negligence," he told BBC News.



"This is the second launch of this rocket; the debris in Ivory Coast last year was from the previous launch, i.e. a basically identical rocket.



"These two incidents [the one now and the Ivory Coast one] are the two largest objects deliberately left to re-enter uncontrolled since Skylab in 1979."



Fragments of the US space station Skylab scattered across Western Australia in 1979, attracting worldwide attention.



Hugh Lewis, who models space debris at Southampton University, UK, noted that more than 60 years of spaceflight had left a large legacy of junk in orbit. The responsibility for this litter rests on several countries, but principally Russia and the US.



"It's worth remembering that there are approximately 900 orbital rocket stages in low-Earth orbit, left behind by nearly every launch-capable nation and with a combined mass orders or magnitude greater than the one expected to re-enter the atmosphere this [weekend]," Dr Lewis posted on Twitter.



Modern practice now calls for rocket stages to be de-orbited as soon as possible after their mission. In the case of large core segments, these would normally come straight back, within one orbit, falling into the ocean or on land (the US company SpaceX now propulsively lands its core stages so they can be used again).



For upper-stages that go into an orbit and may travel around the globe several times as they precisely position a payload, the preference is to include a re-ignitable engine that can steer the stage into a return at the earliest opportunity.



Usually, this would be over an ocean - potentially in the furthest place from land in the South Pacific, between Australia, New Zealand and South America.



Over an area of approximately 1,500 sq km (580 sq miles), this region is a popular graveyard of rocket elements and defunct satellites, where the remains of around 260 missions are thought to be scattered on the ocean floor.

Big Chinese rocket segment set to fall to Earth

(BBC): China has launched a key module of a new permanent space station, the latest in Beijing's increasingly ambitious space programme.



The Tianhe module - which contains living quarters for crew members - was launched from the Wenchang Space Launch Centre on a Long March-5B rocket.



China hopes to have the new station operational by 2022.



The only space station currently in orbit is the International Space Station, from which China is excluded.



China has been a late starter when it comes to space exploration. It was only in 2003 that it sent its first astronaut into orbit, making it the third country to do so, after the Soviet Union and the US.



So far, China has sent two previous space stations into orbit. The Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2 were trial stations though, simple modules that allowed only relatively short stays by astronauts.



The new, 66-tonne, multi-module Tiangong station is set to be operational for at least 10 years.



Tianhe is the core component of it. It is 16.6m long and 4.2m wide. It will provide power and propulsion and contains the life support technologies and living quarters required by visiting astronauts.



Beijing plans to have at least 10 more similar launches, carrying all the additional equipment into orbit, before the completion of the station next year. It will orbit Earth at an altitude of 340 to 450km (210-280 miles).



The only current space station in orbit is the ISS which is a collaboration between Russia, the US, Canada, Europe and Japan. China has been blocked from participating in it.



The ISS is due to be retired after 2024, which could potentially leave Tiangong as the only space station in Earth's orbit.



China's space programme has become a regular feature in the country's propaganda videos and, in a way, why wouldn't it?



After a high-speed catch up with other nations, it now has bold ambitions beyond Earth.



Having been frozen out of the International Space Station programme by the US, Beijing just decided to build its own.



When the Tiangong station is up and running - possibly as early as next year - though it will be only a quarter of the size of the international facility, no other country will have its own orbiting space lab.



There is talk here of missions to Mars and a lunar station with Russia.



The comparison with the Cold War space race is clearly there to be made: legitimate scientific ambitions mixed up with international mistrust, the potential militarisation of space and key projects being hailed as new benchmarks to justify the enormous amounts of money being spent.

China launches first module of new space station

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP): SpaceX launched four astronauts into orbit Friday using a recycled rocket and capsule, the third crew flight in less than a year for Elon Musk’s rapidly expanding company.



The astronauts from the U.S., Japan and France should reach the International Space Station early Saturday morning, following a 23-hour ride in the same Dragon capsule used by SpaceX’s debut crew last May. They’ll spend six months at the orbiting lab.



It was the first time SpaceX reused a capsule and rocket to launch astronauts for NASA, after years of proving the capability on station supply runs. The rocket was used last November on the company’s second astronaut flight.



Embracing the trend, spacecraft commander Shane Kimbrough and his crew weeks ago wrote their initials in the rocket’s soot, hoping to start a tradition.



“If you have rapid and complete reusability, then that is the gateway to the heavens. That’s what we’re trying to get done, and the support of NASA makes a huge difference,” Musk said after the launch.



Just a week ago, NASA awarded SpaceX a nearly $3 billion contract to provide the lunar lander that will deliver astronauts to the surface of the moon — Musk’s Starship, intended to be fully reusable to attain his ultimate prize of carrying astronauts to Mars and building a city there.



Flying in a recycled capsule Friday provided a bit of deja vu for NASA astronaut Megan McArthur. She launched in the same seat in the same capsule as her husband, Bob Behnken, did during SpaceX’s first crew flight. This time, it was Behnken and their 7-year-old son waving goodbye. McArthur blew kisses and offered virtual hugs.



Also flying SpaceX on Friday: Japan’s Akihiko Hoshide and France’s Thomas Pesquet, the first European to launch in a commercial crew capsule.



It was a stunning scene: The launch plume glowed against the dark sky, reflecting the sunlight at high altitude.



Despite the early hour, spectators lined surrounding roads to watch the Falcon take flight an hour before sunrise. Liftoff was delayed a day to take advantage of better weather along the East Coast in case of a launch abort and emergency splashdown.



“You’re seeing a piece of history happening here,” said Lance Bryan, visiting from Burnsville, Minnesota. “It’s, in this case, good history versus some other things that can happen that have been in our backyard practically.”



A masked Musk met briefly with the astronauts at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center before they boarded white gull-winged Teslas from his electric car company. The astronauts’ spouses and children huddled around the cars for one last “love you” before the caravan pulled away and headed to the pad in the predawn darkness.



“From now on, I’ll see you on a screen!” tweeted Pesquet’s partner, Anne Mottet.



Visibly weary, Musk later said he doesn’t sleep the night before a crew launch and this one was no exception.



“It gets a little bit easier, but still pretty intense, I have to say,” said Musk, who started his space company in 2002.



NASA limited the number of launch guests because of COVID-19, but passengers for SpaceX’s first privately purchased flight made the cut. Tech billionaire Jared Isaacman, who’s bought a three-day flight, watched the Falcon soar with the three people who will accompany him. Their capsule is still at the space station and due back on Earth with four astronauts next Wednesday. It will be refurbished in time for a September liftoff. Another crew flight for NASA will follow in October.



For Friday’s automated flight, SpaceX replaced some valves and thermal shielding, and installed new parachutes on the capsule, named Endeavour after NASA’s retired space shuttle. Otherwise, the spacecraft is the same vehicle that flew before.



“We’re thrilled to have a crew on board Endeavour once again,” SpaceX Launch Control radioed just before liftoff.



All four astronauts clasped hands as Kimbrough noted it was the first time in more than 20 years that U.S., European and Japanese astronauts had launched together.



The first-stage booster touched down on an ocean platform nine minutes after liftoff.



SpaceX picked up the station slack for NASA after the space agency’s shuttles retired in 2011, starting with supply runs the following year. The big draw was last year’s return of astronaut launches to Florida, after years of relying on Russia for rides.



“It’s awesome to have this regular cadence again,” said Kennedy’s director Robert Cabana, a former shuttle commander.



Boeing, NASA’s other contracted crew transporter, isn’t expected to start launching NASA astronauts until early next year. First, it needs to repeat a test flight of an empty Starliner capsule, possibly in late summer, to make up for its software-plagued debut in December 2019.



Last Friday, SpaceX beat out two other companies, including Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, to land astronauts on the moon for NASA in three or more years. They’ll descend to the lunar surface in Starship, the shiny, bullet-shaped rocketship that Musk is testing in the skies over southeast Texas, near the Mexican border.



Full Coverage: Science Musk said Starship should be ready to carry people in a couple years, although he expects to smash more of them before getting there. The 2024 deadline for putting astronauts on the moon, which was set by the Trump administration, is doable, he added.



“It’s a great time to be here, and we’re very excited,” said the European Space Agency’s Frank De Winne, an astronaut turned manager. The space station eventually will come to an end, he noted, but the partnership will continue amid hopes of “European astronauts one day walking on the surface of the moon.”

SpaceX launches 3rd crew with recycled rocket and capsule

(CNN): Mars was a warm, wet planet that was likely capable of supporting life billions of years ago. Something caused the planet to lose its atmosphere and turn into the harsh, frozen desert it is today.



The Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012, has been exploring different aspects of Gale Crater on Mars to understand more about this transition from warm and wet to dry and very cold. The latest study, gathered from data captured by one of the rover's instruments, suggests that Mars actually transitioned back and forth between wetter and drier times before losing its surface water completely around three billion years ago.



Curiosity has been steadily climbing the 3-mile-high Mount Sharp, located at the center of Gale Crater, since 2014. An instrument called a ChemCam sits on the rover's mast and includes a high-resolution camera and laser that can vaporize rocks to help the rover analyze their chemical composition. ChemCam has an infrared-colored laser that can heat rock pieces to 18,000 degrees Fahrenheit. This vaporizes the rock and creates plasma, allowing scientists to essentially look inside the minerals and chemicals comprising the rock and peer back into the planet's geologic history.

Mars didn't lose all of its water at once, based on Curiosity rover find

(CNN): The Ingenuity helicopter survived its first night on the freezing-cold surface of Mars, a major milestone in the rotorcraft's journey ahead of its historic first flight.



Jezero Crater, an ancient lake bed on Mars and the current site of the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter, can drop to temperatures of minus 130 degrees Fahrenheit. That's low enough to do significant damage to the helicopter's electrical and battery components.



The 4-pound helicopter finally separated on April 3 from the belly of the Perseverance rover, where it has been stashed since before the rover launched from Earth in July.



Ingenuity went through a series of movements to unfold from beneath the rover, which looked like the metamorphosis of a butterfly, before dropping the final 4 inches to the Martian surface.



"This is the first time that Ingenuity has been on its own on the surface of Mars," said MiMi Aung, Ingenuity project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a statement. "But we now have confirmation that we have the right insulation, the right heaters, and enough energy in its battery to survive the cold night, which is a big win for the team. We're excited to continue to prepare Ingenuity for its first flight test."



When Ingenuity does fly, which could happen as soon as April 11, it will be the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. In a nod to the first such feat conducted on Earth, Ingenuity carries a swatch of fabric from the Wright brothers' plane, Flyer 1. Ingenuity, the first rotorcraft sent to Mars, presented a challenge to the engineers who designed it for several reasons. It needed to be small enough to tuck up under the rover without endangering Perseverance's mission, which is the first to search for evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars.



Ingenuity also had to be lightweight in order to fly through the Martian atmosphere, which has just 1% of the atmosphere present on Earth, while still having enough power to heat itself and survive the frigid Martian nights. The thin nature of the atmosphere on Mars makes it harder to generate lift and get aloft.



Soon after Perseverance deposited Ingenuity in the center of its airfield, the rover backed away from the helicopter. This allowed the helicopter's solar array to gather critical sunlight.



Perseverance sent back images of the helicopter's four legs sitting on the surface on April 4. The helicopter's blades, currently stacked in alignment on top of each other, will be released on April 7, and the mission team on Earth will send commands to the helicopter to "wiggle" the blades.



The helicopter also needs to go through some checkouts of its computers, which will help Ingenuity autonomously fly through the Martian atmosphere.



Now that Ingenuity isn't borrowing power and heat from the rover, the helicopter will send back information on the performance of its power and thermal control systems over the next two days. This will allow the helicopter team to configure the settings necessary to make sure Ingenuity survives the next 30 days of its mission.



Ingenuity is a technology demonstration, which means that its mission is short compared to the rover's two-year plan to explore Jezero Crater. Now that the helicopter is on the Martian surface, it has 31 Earth days, or 30 Martian sols, to conduct up to five test flights.



During the first flight, the helicopter will attempt to rise about 10 feet (3 meters) in the air from the middle of its flat 33-by-33-foot (10-by-10-meter) airfield, make a turn and touch back down. The trial should last for about 30 seconds. Future flights will test the helicopter's ability to fly higher and longer.



Meanwhile, the Perseverance rover will sit on a nearby overlook and observe the flight, capturing images, video and audio. Those will reach Earth in the days after the first flight.



Once Ingenuity's journey comes to an end, the rover will focus on its science mission and begin studying rocks and collecting samples that will be returned to Earth by future missions.



"Our 30-sol test schedule is frontloaded with exciting milestones," said Teddy Tzanetos, deputy operations lead for the Ingenuity Mars helicopter at JPL, in a statement. "Whatever the future holds, we will acquire all the flight data we can within that timeframe."

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter survives first freezing night on Mars

REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP): Steam and lava spurted Monday from a new fissure at an Icelandic volcano that began erupting last month, prompting the evacuation of hundreds of hikers who had come to see the spectacle.



The new fissure, first spotted by a sightseeing helicopter, was about 500 meters (550 yards) long and about a kilometer (around a half-mile) from the original eruption site in the Geldinga Valley.



The Icelandic Department of Emergency Management announced an immediate evacuation of the area. It said there was no imminent danger to life due to the site’s distance form popular hiking paths.



The Icelandic Meteorological Office said the new volcanic activity wasn’t expected to affect traffic at nearby Keflavik Airport.



The long-dormant volcano on the Reykjanes Peninsula in southwest Iceland flared to life March 20 after tens of thousands of earthquakes were recorded in the area in the past three weeks. It was the area’s first volcanic eruption in nearly 800 years.



The volcano’s proximity to Iceland’s capital, Reykjavík, about 32 kilometers (20 miles) away, has brought a steady stream of tourists to the area, even with the country in partial lockdown to combat the coronavirus. Around 30,000 people have visited the area since the eruption began, according to the Icelandic Tourist Board.



Live footage from the area showed small spouts of lava coming from the new fissure.



Geophysicist Magnus Gudmundsson said the volcanic eruption could be moving north from its original location.



“We now see less lava coming from the two original craters,” he told The Associated Press. “This could be the beginning of second stage.”



Iceland, located above a volcanic hot spot in the North Atlantic, averages one volcanic eruption every four to five years. The last one was at Holuhraun in 2014, when a fissure eruption spread lava the size of Manhattan over the interior highland region.



In 2010, ash from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano shut down much international air travel for several days.

Hikers scramble as new fissure opens up at Icelandic volcano

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP): North Atlantic right whales gave birth over the winter in greater numbers than scientists have seen since 2015, an encouraging sign for researchers who became alarmed three years ago when the critically endangered species produced no known offspring at all.



Survey teams spotted 17 newborn right whale calves swimming with their mothers offshore between Florida and North Carolina from December through March. One of those calves soon died after being hit a boat, a reminder of the high death rate for right whales that experts fear is outpacing births.



The overall calf count equals the combined total for the previous three years. That includes the dismal 2018 calving season, when scientists saw zero right whale births for the first time in three decades. Still, researchers say greater numbers are needed in the coming years for North Atlantic right whales to rebound from an estimated population that’s dwindled to about 360.



“What we are seeing is what we hope will be the beginning of an upward climb in calving that’s going to continue for the next few years,” said Clay George, a wildlife biologist who oversees right whale surveys for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. “They need to be producing about two dozen calves per year for the population to stabilize and continue to grow again.”



Right whales migrate each winter to the warmer Atlantic waters off the Southeastern U.S. to give birth. Trained spotters fly over the coastline almost daily during the calving season, scanning the water for mothers with newborns.



Survey flights over Georgia and Florida ended Wednesday on the last day of March, typically the season’s end. Spotters will monitor waters off the Carolinas through April 15, hoping to pick up any overlooked newborns as the whales head north to their feeding grounds.



This season’s calf count matches the 17 births recorded in 2015. Right whale experts consider that number fairly average, considering the record is 39 births confirmed in 2009.



Scientists suspect a calving slump in recent years may have been caused by a shortage of zooplankton to feed right whales in the Gulf of Maine and the Bay of Fundy off Nova Scotia. They say the uptick in births this season could be a result of whales being healthier after shifting to waters with more abundant food sources.



“It’s a somewhat hopeful sign that they are starting to adjust to this new regime where females are in good enough condition to give birth,” said Philip Hamilton, a right whale researched at the New England Aquarium in Boston.



Regardless, conservationists worry that right whales are dying — largely from manmade causes — at a faster rate than they can reproduce.



Since 2017, scientists have confirmed 34 right whale deaths in waters of the U.S. and Canada — with the leading causes being entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with boats and ships. Considering additional whales were documented in the same period with serious injuries they were unlikely to survive, researchers fear the real death toll could be at least 49.



That would exceed the 39 right whale births recorded since 2017.



“If we reduced or eliminated the human-caused death rate, their birth rate would be fine,” Hamilton said. “The onus should not be on them to reproduce at a rate that can sustain the rate at which we kill them. The onus should be in us to stop killing.”



The federal government is expected to finalize new rules soon aimed at decreasing the number of right whales tangled up in fishing gear used to catch lobster and crabs in the Northeast. Proposals to reduce vertical fishing lines in the water and modify seasonal restricted areas have been met with heated debate. Fishermen say the proposed rules could put them out of businesses, while conservation groups insist they aren’t strict enough.



The National Marine Fisheries Service received more than 170,000 public comments on the proposed rules after a report was issued Dec. 31, said agency spokeswoman Allison Garrett. She said final rules should be published this summer.



Garrett said the fisheries service is also considering adjustments to federal rules that since 2008 have imposed speed limits on larger vessels in certain Atlantic waters during seasonal periods when right whales are frequently seen. An agency report in January found mariners’ compliance with the speed rules have improved overall, but still lagged below 25% for large commercial vessels at four ports in the Southeast.



“We’ve long known from the survival estimates that more right whales are dying than those we see,” said George, the whale survey coordinator for Georgia. “They need to be producing a lot more calves. But the big issue is we’ve got to significantly reduce the number than are being entangled in fishing ropes and struck by boats.”

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