Report by Martin Dawson

On the evening of 3 September 2021, The York Astronomical Society (YAS) had its first public lecture after some 18 months.

We all know why and so I won’t go into it here. YAS member, David Armeson gave an excellent presentation on the latest (and I mean latest) results from the Mars rover ‘Perseverance’ and its little helicopter ‘Ingenuity’.

Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover

Dave did a lot of research and homework for these talks and it showed, using some 60+ images and several short films, the story behind this mission, how it was built and the results coming back.

These missions can last several years if not a decade and having only landed last year (2020) we can expect a lot of years of work and results ahead. Each of these missions gets bolder than the last as they build on the lessons learned from the previous mission (i.e the engineering behind the vehicles) and the scientific results.

All in all, a very well put together lecture by Dave and having spoken to a few people after the talk, they all agreed and they too enjoyed the evening.

The meeting was held at Beetle Bank Farm (York) and we had some 29 people attend and afterward, we gave a tour of our YAS Observatory Renovation to some new people plus members who wanted to see the results of the DIY work completed over the last few months.

Angela (the landlady from Beetle Bank Farm) very graciously had her excellent coffee machine on and kindly served our guests. Thanks again, Angela for your hospitality.