The huge parachute used by NASA’s Perseverance rover to land on Mars contained a secret message, thanks to a puzzle lover on the spacecraft team.   Systems engineer Ian Clark used a binary code to spell out “Dare Mighty Things” in the orange and white strips of the 70-foot (21-meter) parachute. He also included the GPS coordinates for the mission’s headquarters at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Clark, a crossword hobbyist, came up with the idea two years ago. Engineers wanted an unusual pattern in the nylon fabric …

The U.S. government has determined that a one-shot COVID-19 vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson is safe and offers partial protection against the disease.In an analysis released Wednesday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said the vaccine was about 66% effective during global trials in preventing moderate to severe cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.The American company said last month that nearly 44,000 people participated in the trial. Its effectiveness was between 66% and 72% in the United States, 57% in Latin America and in South Africa, …

China’s state media reported Wednesday the country’s Tianwen-1 spacecraft has entered a temporary “parking orbit’ around the planet Mars, where it will stay for about three months before attempting to land a rover on the surface.China National Space Administration (CNSA) said the spacecraft executed a maneuver to adjust its orbit early Wednesday Beijing time.     The Tianwen-1 probe includes an orbiter, a lander and a rover, and while in orbit, the space agency said the probe will be mapping the planet’s surface and collecting additional data, particularly about the …

Ghana has received the first shipment of COVID-19 vaccines through the World Health Organization’s global vaccine-sharing program. A flight carrying 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford University vaccine arrived Wednesday in the capital, Accra, according to a joint statement from WHO and UNICEF, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund. The vaccines were manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer.  The vaccines sent to Ghana were purchased through the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility, or COVAX, an initiative launched by WHO in cooperation with  Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and Gavi, The …

The number of people going hungry in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua has nearly quadrupled in the last two years, the United Nations said on Tuesday, as Central America has been battered by an economic crisis. New data released by the U.N.’s World Food Program showed nearly 8 million people across the four countries are experiencing hunger this year, up from 2.2 million in 2018. “The COVID-19-induced economic crisis had already put food on the market shelves out of reach for the most vulnerable people when the twin hurricanes Eta and …