Rover Perseverance has officially spent 100 days on Mars

Perseverance and its little helicopter partner Ingenuity arrived together on Mars' Jezero Crater on the 18^th February 2021. This marks the 100th Martian day, or "sol," for both vehicles. One sol lasts about 24 hours and 40 minutes which is slightly longer than a normal 24-hour Earth day.

During its first 100 sols on Mars, Perseverance has done plenty of tests on its instruments and cameras. It has also sent back to Earth more than 75,000 images, captured the first-ever true audio of Mars, supported and documented Ingenuity's historic flight campaign as well as generated oxygen from the carbon dioxide-dominated Martian atmosphere.

There are more tasks for Perseverance to do after its 100^th sol in Mars, with the rover starting its scientific missions that will last for at least 700 days. Its mission includes not only checking for signs of life and sending this information back to Earth but also collect soils in caches to be sent back to Earth sometime in the near future.

The first flying vehicle on Mars, Ingenuity, has also completed its five-flight demonstration during its first          100 days without major issues. An extended demonstration has already been done due to the success of the initial tests, albeit with issues during its flight. A glitch during operation occurred and interrupted the flow of photos used by the onboard computer to navigate, which ultimately sent the copter off course. Once the glitch was fixed, it was able to land safely near its target site.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope launch to be delayed until November 2021

The US $9.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, the Hubble telescope’s successor, has been delayed from its planned 31^st October 2021 launch to late November. The telescope is set to be shipped in August to Kourou, French Guiana, where the James Webb telescope will launch to space atop an Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket from the Guiana Space Center.

The sheer size of the telescope has required it to be transported by ship. This means it will have to go through the Panama Canal from where it’s been assembled in California. The travel time is estimated to be at least 15 days.

The James Webb Space Telescope has been in development for a long time with work on this telescope being initiated back in 1997 for an original launch date that was expected to happen in 2007. However, extensive testing and technical glitches have delayed the launch by more than a decade.

The key goals of the telescope include looking back over 13.5 billion years to see the first stars and galaxies forming out of the darkness of the early universe, help astronomers compare the faintest, earliest galaxies to today's grand spirals and ellipticals, see right through and into massive clouds of dust where stars and planetary systems are being born. It will also tell us more about the atmospheres of extrasolar planets, and perhaps even find the building blocks of life elsewhere in the universe.

NASA has unveiled plans to launch 2 new missions to Venus by 2030.

NASA will send two new probes to Venus to learn more about how the planet's atmosphere came to be during its history.

Announced on the 2^nd of June 2021, during NASA administrator Bill Nelson's livestreamed State of NASA speech. The two missions, called DAVINCI+ and VERITAS were selected from NASA's shortlist of four spacecrafts for the next round of Discovery missions; the other two contenders would have visited Jupiter's volcanic moon Io and Neptune's largest moon Triton.

DAVINCI+ (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble Gases, Chemistry and Imaging) will study Venus’ thick atmosphere to learn about its changes over time. The next mission approved, VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography and Spectroscopy) will orbit around Venus to produce a detailed map of the planet’s surface.

Discovery missions are capped at $500 million, excluding costs for the launch vehicle and mission operations. Both new Venus missions will launch between 2028 and 2030 and will carry technology demonstrations as well as the main science components, NASA said in a press release.

VERITAS will host the Deep Space Atomic Clock-2, a successor to similar technology that launched into Earth orbit in June 2019. "The ultra-precise clock signal generated with this technology will ultimately help enable autonomous spacecraft manoeuvres and enhance radio science observations," NASA stated.

DAVINCI+ will host the Compact Ultraviolet to Visible Imaging Spectrometer (CUVIS), the agency added, “which will make high resolution measurements of ultraviolet light using a new instrument based on freeform optics," NASA officials wrote. "These observations will be used to determine the nature of the unknown ultraviolet absorber in Venus' atmosphere that absorbs up to half the incoming solar energy."