Meanwhile, Off World: Perseverance Is Half-Way To The Copper Planet...

Everything is five by five -- and the Perseverance Rover is now halfway to Mars, humming along flawlessly. In addition, OSIRIS-REx is now almost done stowing the copious sample it obtained of Bennu, for the about three year journey home, from 200 million miles out.

So all in all, much of high promise to report, from out there in the inky black of space. Here's a bit from NASA, on the Mars halfway marker -- 146 million miles traversed; same distance left to sail:

. . . .NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission has logged a lot of flight miles since being lofted skyward on July 30 – 146.3 million miles. . . it turns out that is exactly the same distance it has to go before the spacecraft hits the Red Planet's atmosphere like a 11,900 mph (19,000 kph) freight train on Feb. 18, 2021. . . .

"At 1:40 p.m. Pacific Time October 27, 2020, our spacecraft will have just as many miles in its metaphorical rearview mirror as it will out its metaphorical windshield," said Julie Kangas, a navigator working on the Perseverance rover mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. . . . Next stop, Jezero Crater. . . ."

Grinning ear to ear, with little ones perparing Halloween costumes, for both distanced-real-life, and virtual- walk-about parties, nationwide. . . .

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