Rochette, you don’t have to leave the red planet
Plus: How to watch it all offline.
La Rochette, a small town located in north-central France, may not come across your radar...ever. It’s particularly affluent, it’s an hour south of the Eiffel Tower, it has about 3,700 residents. A group called Les chats libres de La Rochette ("The Free Cats of La Rochette") is dedicated to controlling the community’s stray cat population and therefore helping the felines avoid being “condemned to wandering lives, without food, and without care.”
It is, by most accounts that one can find on the internet, quaint. In English, “la rochette” translates to “little rock.” And so, it is the appropriate name for a little rock.
It just so happens that the little rock in question is currently more than 245 million miles away.
The Perseverance rover has dug into La Rochette, a rock in the Jezero Crater on Mars, and pulled out a rock core that it will store for human retrieval sometime in the 2030s. The point of this extraction is to examine the rock core — once it’s safely here back on Earth — for clues about microbial life that could’ve lived on Mars in the distant past. If there’s ever been life in our solar system, it could be in the rock nicknamed after the little town south of Paris.
Keep scrolling to read more on that story and more. I’m Nick Lucchesi, and this is Inverse Daily. Please share this newsletter with a friend by sending them this link.
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Here is Perseverance landing on Mars in February 2021.
A Perseverance and life on Mars — Passant Rabie reports on NASA's Perseverance rover, which has begun drilling up Martian rock cores in search of signs of ancient life on the Red Planet. It found signs of water in the Rochette rock:
The car-sized robot collected its first two samples from the Red Planet after drilling through a rock nicknamed Rochette. These chalk-sized samples may hold clues to the universe’s most burning question: Is there life beyond Earth?
That’s one of the overarching goals of the Perseverance mission, which will spend at least one Martian year (around 687 Earth days) roaming Jezero Crater in search of intriguing clues to Mars’ watery past. Around 3 billion years ago, Mars was likely covered in rivers and shallow seas. During that time, it could potentially have had the right conditions for life to arise.
Go deeper:
- Mars rover makes history and collects rocks for 2030s human retrieval
- The best sci-fi Western of 2021 reveals a problem with colonizing Mars
- Watch: Perseverance captures a sparkling sight from the Martian surface
Here’s your updated guide on how and if you can watch your favorite streaming shows, like Stranger Things, offline.
How to watch it all offline — Say goodbye to that spotty cell signal and hello to streaming on the subway. Mike Bloom has put together an updated guide on how to watch your favorite streaming service offline, from Netflix and Hulu to Paramount+ and ESPN+:
It seems like practically every day, there’s a new streaming service to check out. But as advanced as our world may be in 2021, requiring cell service or a Wi-Fi connection can make it difficult to watch your favorite shows or movies on the go, whether that’s a short ride underground on the subway or a six-hour flight across the country.
Luckily, almost all the big players in streaming — Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, HBO, Amazon, etc. — have thought about this, making it possible for you to download and view their offerings offline.
More new streaming stories:
- Kate review: Netflix’s action-thriller is worth watching for one reason alone
- You need to watch the best high-octane sci-fi movie on Amazon Prime ASAP
- Shang-Chi Disney Plus release date? It’s sooner than you think.
Dubbed Requiem, the supernova is part of a large galaxy cluster called MACS J0138.0-2155.
Supernova Requiem — Jenn Walter reports on a far-off supernova, dubbed Requiem, that will reappear in the sky 16 years from now. It was first spotted in 2016 due to a phenomenon called gravitational lensing:
It’s time to mark your calendar ... for a cosmic event happening 16 years from now. In a September 13 column in Nature Astronomy, researchers predict that a distant supernova will be visible via a telescope in 2037.
But this won’t be the first time we’ve spotted it.
Go deeper:
- A new kind of supernova makes weird black holes
- How the explosive death of stars pollutes the galaxy
- Mysterious galaxies are helping astronomers unlock the secrets of dark matter
The wildfires are inching closer to the telescope array, threatening its ongoing mission.
California wildfires threaten the search for alien life — An array of telescopes used to search for alien life is threatened by wildfires in California. The Allen Telescope Array could be damaged in the Dixie Wildfire.
Go deeper:
- Look: NASA satellite images reveal how the frontlines of fires change
- Learn: 5 tactics to keep your lungs healthy in wildfire smoke
- Realize: 7 satellite images reveal an urgent new phase of the climate crisis
Actor Tom Hardy, who will again take on the role of Venom in Venom 2, marks a birthday today.
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