This May 18, 1969 photo from NASA shows Earth from 36,000 nautical miles away as photographed from the Apollo 10 spacecraft during its trans-lunar journey toward the moon. In March 2021, the U.S. space agency announced that new telescope observations have ruled out any chance of the asteroid Apophis colliding with Earth in 2068.

After 100 years, California condor could return to northwest

SAN FRANCISCO— The endangered California condor could return to the Pacific Northwest for the first time in 100 years.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to allow the release of captive-bred giant vultures into Redwood National Park as early as this fall to create a “nonessential experimental population” for California’s far north, Oregon and northwestern Nevada, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Wednesday.

The project will be headed by the Yurok tribe, which traditionally has considered the California condor a sacred animal and has been working for years to return the species to the tribe’s ancestral territory.

“Certainly within a year we hope to have birds in the sky,” Tiana Williams-Claussen, director of the wildlife department of the Yurok tribe, told the Chronicle.

“Not having him here for 100 years now, we as a people are wounded without having that spirit flying in our skies,” she said.

The California condor is the largest native North American bird, with a wingspan of nearly 10 feet. The scavenger was once widespread but had virtually disappeared by the 1970s because of poaching, lead poisoning from eating animals killed by hunters and destruction of its habitat.

In the early 1980s, all 22 condors remaining in the wild were trapped and brought into a captive-breeding program that began releasing the giant vultures into Southern California’s Los Padres National Forest in 1992. That flock has been expanding its range while other condors now occupy parts of California’s Central Coast, Arizona, Utah and Baja California, Mexico. The total wild population now numbers more than 300 birds.

A dozen adults and two chicks died last summer when a wildfire ravaged their territory in Big Sur, along California’s Central Coast.

The new initiative calls for releasing four or six juvenile condors each year for 20 years throughout Redwood National Park, which is about an hour’s drive from the Oregon border.

Condors can live for 60 years and fly vast distances, which is why their range could extend into several states.

Part of Wright brothers’ 1st airplane on NASA’s Mars chopper

CAPE CANAVERAL — A piece of the Wright brothers’ first airplane is on Mars.

NASA’s experimental Martian helicopter holds a small swatch of fabric from the 1903 Wright Flyer, the space agency revealed Tuesday. The helicopter, named Ingenuity, hitched a ride to the red planet with the Perseverance rover, arriving last month.

Ingenuity will attempt the first powered, controlled flight on another planet no sooner than April 8. It will mark a “Wright brothers’ moment,” noted Bobby Braun, director for planetary science at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The Carillon Historical Park in Dayton, Ohio, the Wrights’ hometown, donated the postage-size piece of muslin from the plane’s bottom left wing, at NASA’s request.

The swatch made the 300 million-mile journey to Mars with the blessing of the Wright brothers’ great-grandniece and great-grandnephew, said park curator Steve Lucht.

“Wilbur and Orville Wright would be pleased to know that a little piece of their 1903 Wright Flyer I, the machine that launched the Space Age by barely one quarter of a mile, is going to soar into history again on Mars!” Amanda Wright Lane and Stephen Wright said in a statement provided by the park.

Orville Wright was on board for the world’s first powered, controlled flight on Dec. 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The brothers took turns, making four flights that day.

A fragment of Wright Flyer wood and fabric flew to the moon with Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong in 1969. A swatch also accompanied John Glenn into orbit aboard space shuttle Discovery in 1998. Both astronauts were from Ohio.

NASA’s 4-pound helicopter will attempt to rise 10 feet into the extremely thin Martian air on its first hop. Up to five increasingly higher and longer flights are planned over the course of a month.

The material is taped to a cable beneath the helicopter’s solar panel, which is perched on top like a graduate’s mortarboard.

For now, Ingenuity remains attached to the rover’s belly. A protective shield dropped away over the weekend, exposing the spindly, long-legged chopper.

The helicopter airfield is right next to the rover’s landing site in Jezero Crater. The rover will observe the test flights from a distant perch, before driving away to pursue its own mission: hunting for signs of ancient Martian life. Rock samples will be set aside for eventual return to Earth.

NASA gives all clear: Earth safe from asteroid for 100 years

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Whew, now here’s some good cosmic news: NASA has given Earth the all clear for the next century from a particularly menacing asteroid.

The space agency announced this week that new telescope observations have ruled out any chance of Apophis smacking Earth in 2068.

That’s the same 1,100-foot space rock that was supposed to come frighteningly close in 2029 and again in 2036. NASA ruled out any chance of a strike during those two close approaches a while ago. But a potential 2068 collision still loomed.

First detected in 2004, Apophis is now officially off NASA’s asteroid “risk list.”

“A 2068 impact is not in the realm of possibility anymore, and our calculations don’t show any impact risk for at least the next 100 years,” Davide Farnocchia of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, said in a statement Friday.

Scientists were able to refine Apophis’ orbit around the sun thanks to radar observations earlier this month, when the asteroid passed within 10.6 million miles.

Apophis will come within 20,000 miles on April 13, 2029, enabling astronomers to get a good look.

“When I started working with asteroids after college, Apophis was the poster child for hazardous asteroids,” Farnocchia said. “There’s a certain sense of satisfaction to see it removed from the risk list.”

— Associated Press