European Mars Mission Begins Rover Descent to Red Planet

On Sunday, a Mars lander is scheduled to leave its mothership and proceed toward the red planet’s surface to assess equipment for Europe’s projected first Mars rover.
The rover will search for signs of past and present life on the red planet.

The Schiaparelli lander is expected to detach from spacecraft Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) at 1442 GMT (10:42 am EDT) following a seven-month journey from Earth. The descent to the surface would take three days.

The Schiaparelli is only the second European effort to land a craft on Mars. The first was a failed mission in 2003 by the British landing craft Beagle 2.

Landing on Earth’s neighbor, which is about 35 million miles (56 million km) away, has brought disappointment to most Russian efforts and provided NASA some trouble as well. The United States presently has two functioning rovers on Mars, Opportunity and Curiosity.

However, an apparently harsh environment has not taken away from the attraction of Mars. US President Barack Obama has recently reiterated his vow to send people to the planet by the 2030s.

Mars Colony

Elon Musk said he would like to launch the first crew to Mars as early as 2024. His privately operated space agency, SpaceX, is currently developing a massive rocket and capsule to carry large numbers of people and cargo to Mars. The ultimate goal of the project is to colonize the planet.

The main mission of ExoMars is to learn whether life has ever existed on the red planet. The current spacecraft holds an atmospheric probe to analyze trace gases such as methane, around Mars.

Methane is a chemical that on Earth is firmly bound to life. Scientists believe that the chemical comes from micro-organisms that either vanished millions of years ago and left gas frozen underground or that some methane-producing organisms still live.

The second part of the ExoMars mission will deliver a European rover to Mars’ surface on 2020. Hence, this makes it the first rover with the capability to move across the planet’s surroundings and drill into the ground to gather and study samples.

The European Space Agency (ESA) leads the ExoMars 2016 mission. Russia’s Roscosmos provided two of the four scientific instruments on the trace gas orbiter as well as the launcher. The lead contractor is Thales Alenia Space, an allied venture between Finmeccanica and Thales.

The cost of the ExoMars mission to ESA is estimated to be around 1.3 billion euros ($1.4 billion). This amount includes the second part of the mission due in 2020 however. Russia’s provision comes on top of that.

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France: New Law Allows Transgender to Legally Change Gender Without Going Through Sterilization

The French legislative body finally passed a petition on Thursday allowing transgender people to legally change gender without enduring sterilization. The rights activists rejoiced in victory as the long-awaited legislation was finally approved.

The decision came out after several European nations supported to improve the rights of transgender people. They urged other nations to remove sterilization as a legal requirement. In order to legally recognize the desired gender, transgender people need to undergo a medical procedure of sterilization. The United Nations strongly condemned the procedure as a violation of human rights.

Denmark, Malta, and Ireland started the reform in 2014 where they made changes in their policies. These nations implied a policy which only needs informing authorities of the desired gender without medical intervention.

For two years, the ILGA-Europe network of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender groups campaigned for the legislation of the French law. The group is based in Brussels, Germany. Sophie Aujean, spokeswoman of ILGA said: “These are years of sparring that finally come to fruition”. She then added in a phone interview with Thomson Reuters Foundation, “There is no other population in the world that is asked to be sterilized apart from transgender.”

French transgenders still require court approval

However, the new legislation is not as liberal with other nations like Denmark, Malta, and Ireland. The French law still requires transgender people the need to go to court for them to change their desired gender.

According to Delphine Ravisé-Giard, a spokeswoman for the National Transgender Association or ANT, “France has sometimes done revolutions, but this is not a revolutionary law”.

France disregards any statistical data of the transgender people. Similarly, France does not hold any official record in the numbers of transgender people. Although activists claim there are tens of thousands living in the European country.

In a European Union report published in December of 2014, transgender people tend to be gay and usually prone to be attacked, threatened or insulted.

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