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It turns out that the six wheeled Opportunity unknowingly ‘created’ the mystery herself when she drove over a larger rock, crushing it with the force from the wheels and her 400 pound (185 kg) mass.

Fragments were sent hurtling across the summit of the north facing Solander Point

One piece unwittingly rolled downhill.

The reverse drive validated feasibility of a technique developed with testing on Earth to lessen damage to Curiosity's wheels when driving over terrain studded with sharp rocks.

On Tuesday, Feb. 18, the rover covered 329 feet (100.3 meters), the mission's first long trek that used reverse driving and its farthest one-day advance of any kind in more than three months.

The mission's destinations remain the same: a science waypoint first and then the long-term goal of investigating the lower slopes of Mount Sharp, where water-related minerals have been detected from orbit.

Saccharin discovered

In 1879, saccharin, the artificial sweetener, was discovered by Constantin Fahlberg, while he was researching coal tar compounds for Ira Remsen at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland With hands unwashed since leaving his laboratory work, during a meal, he accidentally discovered its intensely sweet taste when his fingers touched his lips. He subsequently obtained patents on its synthesis, and with his uncle, Dr. Adolf List, started a factory to produce and market it.

Soviet spacecraft reaches Venus surface

In 1966, the mission of the Soviet Union's unmanned spacecraft Venera 3 (Venus 3) was a partial success when it reached Venus and automatically released a small landing capsule intended to explore the planet's atmosphere during a parachute descent. However, contact had been lost since 16 Feb 1966. Although no data was returned before the capsule impacted, it became the first man-made object to touch the surface of another planet. The Soviet Union issued a commemorative stamp to mark the achievement. Venera 3 was launched on 16 Nov 1965. The landing capsule (0.9-m diam., about 300-kg) had been designed to collect data on pressure, temperature, and composition of the Venusian atmosphere. Failure is believed due to overheating of internal components and the solar panels

NASA’s renowned Mars rover Opportunity has been spied

y from above and below

orbital view above – just released

The largest clinical study ever conducted to date of patients with advanced leukemia found that 88 percent achieved complete remissions after being treated with genetically modified versions of their own immune cells.

Adult B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL), a type of blood cancer that develops in B cells, is difficult to treat because the majority of patients relapse.

Patients with relapsed B-ALL have few treatment options; only 30 percent respond to salvage chemotherapy.

A team of researchers

has, for the first time, successfully grown a human lung in a lab

Windpipes, for example, have been successfully grown and implanted into human patients, and just last spring

Researchers

discovered that MRI-based imaging techniques may be just as effective as other conventional scanning methods minus the radiation risks that come with cancer detection

medical officials often must send radioactive traces through the body as part of PET-CT scans that expose a patient to the equivalent of 700 chest X-rays