Caroline Hulbert 4.25.21
AP Bio C Even Current Event 20
Grossman, Lisa. “NASA's Perseverance Rover Split CO2 to Make Breathable Air on Mars.” Science News, 23 Apr. 2021, www.sciencenews.org/article/nasa-perseverance-rover-mars-oxygen-air.
For this current event, I chose to review Lisa Grossman’s article, “NASA's Perseverance Rover Split CO2 to Make Breathable Air on Mars.” Grossman begins detailing the experimental device on the Mars Perseverance rover, which recently Split carbon dioxide molecules into their component parts, creating around 10 minutes’ worth of breathable oxygen. The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, abbreviated to MOXIE, is “about the size of a toaster” and breaks oxygen atoms off of carbon dioxide, which is the primary component of Mars’ atmosphere. Because of this, researchers like Michael Hecht at MIT have called it “an electrical tree.” MOXIE was sent with Perseverance to Mars and arrived there on February 18th. On April 20th, MOXIE warmed up to around 800℃ and ran until it produced five grams of oxygen. Grossman then clarifies that the primary focus of producing oxygen on Mars isn’t for breathing, but rather for the return to Earth. The burning of fuel requires oxygen, so astronauts traveling to Mars in the future will either have to bring oxygen with them or produce it there. According to the article, 25 metric tons of oxygen are needed to lift a rocket with a few astronauts off of the planet’s surface. MOXIE is a prototype for the device astronauts could use to make fuel in the future. It can create only 10 grams of oxygen per hour, running for around one Martian day at a time. A scaled-up version, however, could run continuously for 26 months. Because it is powered by Perseverance, MOXIE cannot run continuously, as the rover needs to use its power to continue the mission of searching for signs of past life on Mars.
This article is extremely important to the future of space travel, and opens the door for future research and missions. The success of this technology could set the stage for a permanent research station on Mars, and brings us even closer to human travel to Mars.
This article was very well-written and informative about current scientific research and developments. The author included opening details that hook the reader in and introduce the discussed topics that may be unfamiliar to some readers. She often sourced other ScienceNews articles, but it would have made her more credible to include information from other sources, like NASA. I thought that it would have been interesting if she had explained how MOXIE actually works and how oxygen is extracted from the carbon dioxide molecules.
Nate Kim
ReplyDelete4/24/21
AP Bio
Current Event 20
Hulbert, Caroline . “NASA Rover.’” Blogspot.com, 25 April. 2021, https://bronxvilleapbiology.blogspot.com/2021/04/current-event-20.html
Grossman, Lisa. “NASA's Perseverance Rover Split CO2 to Make Breathable Air on Mars.” Science News, 23 Apr. 2021, www.sciencenews.org/article/nasa-perseverance-rover-mars-oxygen-air.
Caroline’s deep dive into "NASA's Perseverance Rover Split CO2 to Make Breathable Air on Mars" is a brilliant display of analytical genius that is able to properly inform her audience on the topic of this new technology that could be astronomically important for astronauts in the future. Caroline does a great job of weaving in her own personal commentary in the intro paragraph where she gives a summary of the article. As a result, there is great flow between ideas and the summary becomes more cohesive as a result. I loved the way Caroline gave clear reasons as to why she chose this article. It really gives us great insight into her thoughts and creates a connection with the audience that makes her seem more trustworthy and reliable. Lastly, I liked her connections and extrapolation of ideas. Caroline does not just regurgitate the ideas from the article. She adds to them with original and unique thoughts of her own.
Although I really enjoyed reading Caroline’s analysis, I believe that there are places that could be improved. Caroline uses sophisticated vocabulary that could make her writing a little hard to understand for readers that are not well-versed in the field of biology or science in general. This is easily remedied by just defining more terms or using simpler language. For example, in the intro/ summary paragraph, Caroline uses the word “In-Situ.” If this term is not known by a reader, the rest of the paragraph will be confusing. Caroline describes the word to an extent, but her explanation could have been better. She could have added some extra information in the second paragraph to let us know when this technology will be upscaled and usable in the future.
Overall, Caroline‘s article review is fantastic and clearly demonstrates a high level of understanding of the topic at hand. I thoroughly enjoyed reading her review because of the breadth of knowledge that she possesses on this topic. I learned about MOXIE and breathable air on Mars. I’m grateful that Caroline has brought this idea to my attention at such an early stage so that I can do my own research and attempt to learn more.
Henry Min
ReplyDeleteMr. Ippolito
Ap Biology
4/25/21
Grossman, Lisa. “NASA's Perseverance Rover Split CO2 to Make Breathable Air on Mars.” Science News, 23 Apr. 2021, www.sciencenews.org/article/nasa-perseverance-rover-mars-oxygen-air. .
In Caroline’s review of Lisa Grossman’s “NASA’s Perseverance Rover Split CO@ to Make Breathable Air on Mars” she does a good job over giving an overview of the weeks and months to come. More specifically, Caroline goes over all of the steps and precautions the government is going to take when distributing the COVID-19 vaccine. During December, “the vaccine [will start] to be shipped, but won’t have a widespread impact for several months” due to the limited amount of vaccines. Only around three million vaccines will be distributed, and then the next three will be shipped to the same people for their second shots. The next step is for scientists to look for side effects and other health issues once giving a vaccine. Throughout Pfizer’s vaccine trials, the most common side effects were minor fevers, headaches, and fatigue. This is a big factor as “two people have had serious allergic reactions after getting Pfizer’s vaccine” and it has to be fail proof. Another step is figuring out if people who already had COVID-19 need to be vaccinated or not. “A small number of people in the PFizer trial had antibodies in their blood indicating that they had been infected prior to [being vaccinated]”, and this shows that even people who have developed antibodies may need to be vaccinated. After this scientist will decide whether to vaccinate people in the placebo group. The controversy surrounding this is how vaccinating placebo patients will delegitimize their results, and therefore there are some scientists who don’t support vaccinating placebo patients. If everything goes right, then Pfizer will decide if the vaccine is ready for children. They believe that because children develop milder symptoms compared to adults, there is no rush to vaccinate all children yet. Hopefully if everything falls into place, then the FDA should give their full approval for the vaccine.
I enjoyed reading this article as I am interested in the current state of the vaccine and COVID-19 in general. Caroline’s structure of her article made it really easy for me to understand exactly what Pfizer’s plan is in order for the vaccine to reach as many people as possible.
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