Video From the department of "we've got this supercomputer on the space station, what shall we do with it?" Wear and tear is a problem for astronauts venturing out of the orbiting lab, and while helmets filling with water may have garnered all the headlines, decades of grabbing for handrails and maneuvering equipment takes its toll on gloves. The gloves have five layers – a rubberized coating, followed by a cut-resistant material called Vectran then three further layers to keep the person inside at just the right temperature and pressure. Problems come when wear reaches the Vectran layer, for beyond that lies the pressure bladder and a bit further, the squishy human. Since, by their nature, the gloves get quite a bit of use, NASA insists astronauts take photos of their gloves and send them back to Earth for inspection prior to reuse. While this is all very well on the ISS, doing something similar on (or in orbit around) Mars, or when communication is constrained, is less than ideal.

They are doing critical science missions in an intense operating environment where safety is paramount. On spacewalks they repair equipment, install new instruments and upgrade the largest spacecraft ever flown. Just like workers here on Earth, their gloves can show wear and tear – even rips and cuts – presenting potential safety concerns. To prevent problems from arising, astronauts working for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) must take photos of their spacesuit gloves during and after every spacewalk and transmit them down to Earth for inspection. From there, NASA analysts examine photos of the gloves, looking for any damage that could pose a hazard, and then send the results back to the astronauts on the ISS.

Last Thursday, NASA's Perseverance rover grabbed headlines all around the world, with its historic landing on the Martian surface. The rover, which was launched July 30, 2020, from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida atop a ULA Atlas 541 rocket, finally made touched down at 3.44pm ET (8.44pm GMT). The mission objective is to search for signs of ancient life and to collect rock and soil samples for possible return to Earth – where it will be scanned for presence of microbial life. The name Perseverance was given by Alex Mather, who won a K-12 public naming contest with 28,000 entries. Named after the human characteristic, the mission follows similar name-scheme of its predecessors: Curiosity, Spirit and Opportunity. The rover made a touch down at an ancient river delta site in Jezero Crater.