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A year on Mars & the gift of space

Chris Sembroski and Kyle Hippchen at SpaceX's LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center. Photo: Kyle Hippchen
Chris Sembroski and Kyle Hippchen at SpaceX's LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center. Photo: Kyle Hippchen

NASA’s Perseverance rover is celebrating one year on Mars. The robot explorer arrived last year after a seven month journey from Cape Canaveral in Florida. It’s on the hunt for evidence of ancient life on Mars and is tasked with selecting and preparing samples of Martian rocks to send back to Earth.

While it has spent a year on the red planet, its work is only just beginning. We’ll speak with Briony  Horgan, a planetary scientist at Purdue who is also working on the Perseverance mission about its busy first year and what’s to come for NASA’s newest Martian explorer.

Then, SpaceX’s Inspiration 4 mission sent four civilian astronauts into space. One of those astronauts is Chris Sembrosky and he won his seat through a raffle, or so we thought. Turns out his friend Kyle Hippchen actually won the seat, but after learning he didn’t meet certain physical requirements for the mission, he gave it up to Chris.

We’ll talk with both of them about Kyle’s gift to Chris and how he followed along during his journey to space and back.

Brendan covers space news for WMFE, everything from rocket launches to the latest scientific discoveries in our universe. He hosts WMFE's weekly radio show and podcast "Are We There Yet?" which explores human space exploration. Brendan is a native Floridian, born and raised in Broward County. He moved to Central Florida in 2005 to attend the University of Central Florida. He began working at WMFE as a college intern where he discovered his love for public radio.