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NASA’s Mars rover has suffered “abuse” while it has been roaming the red planet, according to the space agency.

The Curiosity Rover has been exploring Mars since 2012, sending back crucial information about the planet as it rolls around the rocky terrain near the Gale Crater where it landed.

Sharing a picture of one of the Curiosity rover’s battered wheels, Ashley Stroupe, a mission operations engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said the rover “is still holding up well despite taking some of the worst abuse from Mars”.

Two images were released of the wheel which were taken by the rover’s “hand lens imager” which sits at the end of its robotic arm.

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity took this picture using its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI). Pic: NASA
Image:
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity took this picture using its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI). Pic: NASA

The rover has six wheels and the images were taken of its right-middle wheel.

The images were part of NASA’s “periodic check-in on our wheels to see how they are holding up on the rough terrain”, according to Ms Stroupe in the blog post.

Phobos, one of Mars' two moons and Earth, captured for the first time by the Curiosity Rover. Pic: NASA/X
Image:
Phobos, one of Mars’ two moons and Earth, captured for the first time by the Curiosity Rover. Pic: NASA/X

A few weeks earlier, the Curiosity Rover captured a photo of Earth with one of Mars’s moons for the first time.

“POV: You’re on Mars, looking up at the night sky and you notice…,” posted the team behind the Rover on X.

“That’s Phobos, one of Mars’ two moons – and the tiny evening “star” to its right is Earth!”

The Curiosity Rover's route on Mars. Pic: NASA
Image:
The Curiosity Rover’s route on Mars. Pic: NASA

The rover has covered 20 miles on the planet and is currently in an area called the Gedis Vallis.

Its mission objective is to “determine if Mars was ever able to support microbial life”, which would give scientists clues as to whether life could now be supported on the planet.

The bright white stones of Sheep Creek, taken by the Curiosity rover. Pic: NASA
Image:
The bright white stones of Sheep Creek, taken by the Curiosity rover. Pic: NASA

Last weekend it completed a “highly anticipated examination” of white stones in the Sheep Creek, also investigating Cloud Canyon, Moonlight Lake, and Angora Mountain.

Those place names “sound so lovely and soft, and are quite evocative of these pale stones, which stand out so much against the background”, said Alex Innanen, an atmospheric scientist at York University who wrote the latest Curiosity blog post.

The team operating the rover are trying to discover if the rocks contain sulphur, like another sulphuric rock pile that was accidentally discovered earlier this year when the rover cracked it open with its wheels.

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Mars plays a big role in plans for humanity.

Space and tech billionaire Elon Musk says he plans to have a self-sustaining human colony on Mars in the next two decades, and will try and blast off five Starship spaceships to the planet in the next two years.

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If those launches go well, he’s aiming for humans to be sent up to Mars by 2028.

“Eventually,” he said in a recent X post about the missions, “there will be thousands of Starships going to Mars and it will [be] a glorious sight to see!”

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Two dead after plane crashes into vehicles on busy road in Sao Paulo

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Two dead after plane crashes into vehicles on busy road in Sao Paulo

Two people have died after a plane crashed into vehicles on a busy road in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo.

A fire department spokesperson confirmed the deaths to local media.

The plane crashed on Marques de Sao Vicente Avenue in Barra Funda at around 7.20am local time.

Images and video footage showing a bus on fire in the aftermath.

Two people – a motorcyclist and a woman who was on the bus – were injured after they were struck by debris from the explosion, CNN Brasil reported.

The aircraft – a small twin-engine King Air – had left Campo de Marte Airport, the Brazilian television news channel reported. The control tower lost contact with the plane minutes later.

The cause of the crash is being investigated.

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.

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Australian politician changes his name to ‘Aussie Trump’

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Australian politician changes his name to 'Aussie Trump'

An Australian politician has legally changed his name to Austin Trump in a move inspired by Donald Trump – in what he said was a protest against the country’s ruling centre-left Labor Party.

Ben Dawkins – who is an independent MP in Western Australia’s upper house of parliament where Labor holds a majority – is now listed as “Aussie Trump” on the WA parliamentary website.

He has also changed his username to “Hon. Aussie Trump MLC” on his X account.

“I’ve launched a political protest against the tyranny and systematic corruption of the Labor government in WA,” he wrote, in a post on the social media platform, signing off as “Aussie”.

“Vote Labor Out! & Drill Baby Drill!,” he wrote in a second post, appearing to echo the US president’s plan to increase the extraction of oil and gas in the United States.

He also posted a photo showing legal confirmation of the name change from Western Australia’s Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages.

“I want to be like Trump in the sense of calling out woke leftist nonsense,” he told 9News.

“I would love you to reach out Donald, just ring the office here.”

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“This is simply attention-seeking stuff,” said Western Australia’s Premier Roger Cook, the state’s Labor leader, at a news conference on Thursday.

“I’m not sure how much lower he can go.”

Western Australia state elections are due to take place in March, before the country goes to the polls in a nationwide vote that must be held before 17 May.

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USAID crisis leaves South Africans living with HIV in turmoil

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USAID crisis leaves South Africans living with HIV in turmoil

A woman walks up to the security guards outside a shuttered USAID-funded sexual health clinic in Johannesburg’s inner-city district.

She looks around with confusion as they let her know the clinic is closed.

She tells us it has only been two months since she came here to receive her usual care.

Now, she must scramble to find another safe place for her sexual health screenings and Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) – her regular defence against rampant HIV.

On the day he was sworn in as US president for a second time, Donald Trump signed an executive order freezing foreign aid for a 90-day period.

That is being challenged by federal employee unions in court over what it says are “unconstitutional and illegal actions” that have created a “global humanitarian crisis”.

However the order is already having an immediate impact on South Africa’s most vulnerable.

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Her eyes tear up as she processes the news. Like many sex workers in town, free sexual health clinics are her lifeline.

An HIV-positive sex worker shared her patient transfer letter from the same closed clinic with Sky News and told us with panic that she is still waiting to be registered at an alternative facility.

South Africa is home to one of the world’s worst HIV/AIDS epidemics. At least 8.5 million people here are living with HIV – a quarter of all cases worldwide.

Widespread, free access to antiretroviral treatment in southern Africa was propelled by the introduction of George W. Bush’s US President Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in 2003.

PEPFAR is considered one of the most successful foreign aid programmes in history, and South Africa is the largest recipient of its funds.

A sign for USAID on the clinic's window
Image:
A sign for USAID on the clinic’s window

A shuttered USAID-funded sexual health clinic in Johannesburg
Image:
A shuttered USAID-funded sexual health clinic in Johannesburg

The programme has now been halted by President Trump’s foreign aid funding freeze – plunging those who survived South Africa’s HIV epidemic and AIDS denialism in the early 2000s back to a time of scarcity and fear.

“That time, there was no medication. The government would tell us to take beetroot and garlic. It was very difficult for the government to give us treatment but we fought very hard to win this battle. Now, the challenge is that we are going back to the struggle,” says Nelly Zulu, an activist and mother living with HIV in Soweto.

Nelly says access to free treatment has saved her and her 21-year-old son, who tested positive for HIV at four years old.

“It helped me so much because if I didn’t get the treatment, I don’t think I would be alive – even my son.

“My concern is for pregnant women. I don’t want them to go through what I went through – the life I was facing before. I’m scared we will go back to that crisis.”

Nelly Zulu, an activist and mother living with HIV
Image:
Nelly Zulu, an activist and mother living with HIV

South African civil society organisations have written a joint open letter calling for their government to provide a coordinated response to address the healthcare emergency created by the US foreign aid freeze.

The letter states that close to a million patients living with HIV have been directly impacted by stop-work orders and that a recent waiver by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio continuing life-saving assistance explicitly excludes “activities that involve abortions, family planning, gender or diversity, equality and inclusion ideology programmes, transgender surgeries or other non-life saving assistance”.

The shuttered clinic we saw in Johannesburg’s central business district (CBD) comes under these categories – built by Witwatersrand University to research reproductive health and cater to vulnerable and marginalised communities.

An activist and healthcare worker at a transgender clinic tells us everyone she knows is utterly afraid.

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USAID in turmoil: What you need to know

“Corner to corner, you hear people talking about this. There are people living with chronic diseases who don’t have faith anymore because they don’t know where they are ending up,” says Ambrose, a healthcare worker and activist.

“People keep asking corner to corner – ‘why don’t you go here, why don’t you go there?’ People are crying – they want to be assisted.”

South Africa’s ministry of health insists that only 17% of all HIV/AIDs funding comes from PEPFAR but that statistic is offset by the palpable disruption.

On Monday, minister of health Dr Aaron Motsoaledi met to discuss bilateral health cooperation and new US policy for assistance with US charge d’affaires for South Africa, Dana Brown.

A statement following the meeting says: “Communication channels are open between the Ministry and the Embassy, and we continue to discuss our life-saving health partnership moving forward.

“Until details are available the minister called on all persons on antiretrovirals (ARVs) to under no circumstances stop this life-saving treatment.”

A demand much harder to execute than declare.

“There is already a shortage of the medication – even if you ask for three months’ treatment, they will give you one or two months worth then you have to go back,” says Nelly.

“Now, it is worse because you can see the funding has been cut off.”

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