Howdy Doody is an American children's television program (with circus and Western frontier themes) that was created and produced by Victor F. Campbell and E. Roger Muir. It was broadcast on the NBC television network in the United States from December 27, 1947, until September 24, 1960. It was a pioneer of children's programming and set the pattern for many similar shows. One of the first television series produced at NBC in Rockefeller Center, in Studio 3A, it pioneered color production in 1956 and NBC (then owned by RCA Television) used the show to promote color television sets in the late 1950s.

Story

Buffalo Bob Smith created Howdy Doody during his days as a radio announcer on WNBC. At that time, Howdy Doody was only a voice Smith performed on the radio. When Smith made an appearance on NBC's television program Puppet Playhouse on December 27, 1947, the reception for the character was great enough to begin a demand for a visual character for television. Frank Paris, a puppeteer whose puppets appeared on the program, was asked to create a Howdy Doody puppet.

Bob Smith, the show's host, was dubbed "Buffalo Bob" early in the show's run (a reference both to the historical American frontier character Buffalo Bill and Smith's hometown of Buffalo, New York). At first the set was supposed to be a circus tent, but soon was changed to a western town. Smith wore cowboy garb, as did the puppet. The name of the puppet "star" was derived from the American expression "howdy doody"/"howdy do," a commonplace corruption of the phrase "How do you do?" used in the Western United States. (The straightforward use of that expression was also in the theme song's lyrics.) Smith, who had gotten his start as a singing radio personality in Buffalo, frequently used music in the program. Cast members Lew Anderson and Robert "Nick" Nicholson both were experienced jazz musicians.

As both the character and television program grew in popularity, demand for Howdy Doody-related merchandise began to surface. By 1948, toymakers and department stores had been approached with requests for Howdy Doody dolls and similar items. Macy's department store contacted Frank Paris, the creator of the puppet, to ask about rights for a Howdy Doody doll. However, while Paris had created the puppet, Bob Smith owned the rights to the character. An argument ensued between the two men, Paris claiming he felt he was being cheated out of any financial benefits. After one such disagreement, Paris took the puppet and angrily left the NBC studios about four hours before the show was to air live. It was not the first time this happened, leaving the live program with no "star".

With Paris's past disappearances, impromptu excuses regarding the whereabouts of Howdy Doody had been hastily concocted. This time, an elaborate explanation was offered—that Howdy was busy with the elections on the campaign trail. NBC hurriedly constructed a map of the United States, which allowed viewers, with the help of Smith, to learn where Howdy was on the road. The explanation continued that while on the campaign trail, Howdy decided to improve his appearance with some plastic surgery. This made it possible for the network to hire Disney animator Mel Shaw and his business partner Bob Allen to design (refer to U.S. Patent D156687 for a "new, original, and ornamental design" for the puppet) and Velma Wayne Dawson to build and operate a more handsome and appealing visual character than Paris's original, which had been called "the ugliest puppet imaginable" by Bob Smith. Since Paris did not provide the voice of the character, Howdy's voice would stay the same after his appearance changed. The puppet that is remembered as the "original" Howdy Doody replaced Paris's original.

Howdy Doody
Howdy Doody himself was a freckle-faced boy marionette with 48 freckles, one for each state of the union at the time of his creation (up until January 3, 1959, when Alaska became the 49th state), and originally was voiced by Smith. The Howdy Doody show's various marionettes were created and built by puppeteers Dawson, Scott Brinker (the show's prop man), and Rufus Rose throughout the show's run. The redheaded Howdy marionette on the original show was operated with 11 strings: two heads, one mouth, one eye, two shoulders, one back, two hands and two knees. Three strings were added when the show returned—two elbows and one nose. The original marionette now resides at the Detroit Institute of Arts. There were duplicate Howdy Doody puppets, designed to be used expressly for off-the-air purposes (lighting rehearsals, personal appearances, etc.), although surviving kinescope recordings clearly show that these duplicate puppets were indeed used on the air occasionally. "Double Doody", the Howdy stand-in puppet, now is in the entertainment collection at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

Photo Doody is the near-stringless marionette that was used in personal appearances, photos, parades, and the famed NBC test pattern. He was sold by Leland's Sports Auction House in 1997 for more than $113,000 to a private art collector, TJ Fisher.

Characters

Puppet characters
Besides Howdy Doody, the other characters in this show are:

 Heidi Doody – Introduced as a stranger who saved Buffalo Bob's life in Africa, she was adopted as Howdy's sister.
 Phineas T. Bluster – The resident skinflint, mayor of Doodyville and nemesis of Howdy; one of the Bluster triplets.
 Petey Bluster – Phineas's nephew.
 Don José Bluster – The South American Bluster brother.
 Thaddeus Bluster – Another Bluster brother.
 Hector Hamhock Bluster – The British Bluster brother.
 Princess Summerfall Winterspring – Introduced as a puppet, then played by actress Judy Tyler, who afterwards appeared opposite Elvis Presley in the 1957 film Jailhouse Rock. After she was killed in a car accident on July 3, 1957, at the age of 24, the character was portrayed by a marionette.
 Dilly Dally – Howdy's naive boyhood friend.
 Inspector John J. Fadoozle – "America's No. 1 private eye" whose character was revealed as the mysterious "Mr. X" who used the pseudonym to run against Howdy for the office of President of All the Boys and Girls of America; children could vote by using ballots that were attached to the wrappers of loaves of Wonder Bread, a major sponsor of the show.
 Chief Thunderthud and Chief Featherman – Two of several Native American characters used to emphasize the show's western theme.
 J. Cornelius Cobb – The shopkeeper (played by Nick Nicholson), who had a strong dislike for clowns.
 Sandra the Witch
 Capt. Windy Scuttlebut
 Flub-a-Dub – A hybrid of eight animals. He had a duck's bill, a cat's whiskers, a spaniel's ears, a giraffe's neck, a dachshund's body, a seal's flippers, a pig's tail, and an elephant's memory.

Animal puppets
The show also featured animal puppets such as:

 Hyde and Zeke – Twin bears.
 Mambo – An African elephant.
 Tizzy – A dinosaur.
 Paddle – A gnu.
 Tommy Turtle – A slow-talking turtle who is not very bright.

Human characters

There also were several human characters, most notably:

 Clarabell – The mute clown who communicated in mime, by honking horns on his belt, and by squirting seltzer. Originally played by Bob Keeshan, who went on to create the children's TV character Captain Kangaroo, he was later played by Robert "Nick" Nicholson and finally by Lew Anderson. Clarabell did not talk because he would have to be paid scale, and it was a low-budget show.
 J. Cornelius Cobb (played by "Nick" Nicholson concurrently with the role of Clarabell and then exclusively when Lew Anderson took over the Clarabell role) –
 Sir Archibald (played by Dayton Allen) – An explorer.
 Chief Thunderthud (portrayed by Bill Le Cornec) – Head of the Ooragnak (kangaroo spelled backward) tribe of American Indians. Edward Kean originated Thunderthud's greeting "Kowabonga!"—a nonsense word that eventually became part of the California surfer culture lexicon.
 Princess Summerfall Winterspring (portrayed by Judy Tyler) – As a teenager, Tyler began her career with this supporting role, which she played from 1950 to 1956. The opportunity led to Tyler breaking out to starring roles on Broadway and eventually Hollywood, where she notably co-starred with Elvis Presley in Jailhouse Rock before dying in a 1957 auto accident.
 Gus Gasbags (played by Ed Alberian) – A man who made animal balloons.
The characters inhabited the fictional town of Doodyville. Several characters (including Ugly Sam, the world's worst wrestler, and Pierre the Chef) were played by comedian Dayton Allen, who later went on to become a cast regular on NBC's prime time The Steve Allen Show.

The Howdy show's non-televised rehearsals were renowned for including considerable double-entendre dialogue between the cast members (particularly the witty Dayton Allen) and the puppet characters. Corny Cobb was played by Bobby "Nick" Nicholson in 1952, by puppeteer Rufus Rose in 1953 and 1954 while Nicholson assumed the role of Clarabell, and again by Nicholson from early 1955 until the end of the show.

Clarabell was first played by Bob Keeshan (who also played The Featherman). Keeshan continued in that role until December 1952, when he, Dayton Allen, puppeteer Rhoda Mann, and Bill LeCornec left the show over a salary dispute. The role of Clarabell was then taken by Nicholson, who played it for about 22 months. In January 1955, the role was turned over to Anderson, who kept it until the series ended and for all subsequent revivals and specials, while Nicholson took on the role of J. Cornelius "Corny" Cobb.  At the end of the final episode, telecast on September 24, 1960, Clarabell broke his series-long silence to say the final words of the final broadcast: "Goodbye, kids." Each of the cast members also played other roles as required.

Dolls
Howdy Doody dolls were also sold commercially, as well as marionettes of Howdy Doody and Flub-a-dub. There were also two other marionettes, Don José and Hector Hamhock Bluster, brothers of Phineas T.

Replicas of Howdy
In addition to the original vintage puppets, puppetmaker Alan Semok (at the request of Bob Smith in the early 1990s) created several precise replicas of Howdy, including—thanks to improved materials and new molding techniques—a more exact marionette replica than had ever been produced, as well as a new Photo Doody which Smith used in personal appearances until his death from cancer on July 30, 1998, at the age of 80. One of Semok's marionette duplicates appears on a 2005 cover of TV Guide magazine as part of a series recreating classic covers from the magazine's history. The cover featured Howdy with TV host Conan O'Brien dressed as Buffalo Bob Smith. Another of the Semok duplicates resides in the International Museum and Library of the Conjuring Arts, the private museum owned by illusionist David Copperfield.

Custody battle

After the death of Bob Smith, a fierce legal and custody battle for the original Howdy Doody puppet erupted among his heirs, the Rufus Rose estate, and a museum to which the marionette had been bequeathed. Howdy once again was in the news, with his face and story making headline broadcast, wire, talk show and print news around the world. For a while during the tug-of-war fight, the puppet was held in a bank safe deposit box while the saga played out in the federal courts.

During one day of deposition, puppetmaker Semok (who had performed various maintenance and repainting of the original Howdy marionette beginning in 1989) was called upon to unseal a trap door on the back of the puppet's head; Velma Dawson, the puppet's original builder, who was 88 at the time of the deposition, was present and given the opportunity to examine the inside of the head in an effort to verify that the puppet in question was the original she created. Despite 50 years of numerous repairs, repaints, and replaced body parts, Dawson eventually declared the head of the puppet to be the one she originally made in 1948. The Detroit Institute of Arts ultimately prevailed and has custody of the original Howdy.

Broadcast history
Originally an hour on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays (at 5 p.m. Eastern), the show moved to Monday through Friday, 5:30 to 6 p.m. EST in August 1948. During part of its run, it was preceded by the 15-minute program The Gabby Hayes Show, hosted by the veteran cowboy sidekick actor George "Gabby" Hayes. In June 1956, it began to be shown on Saturdays only, in a morning time slot (10-10:30 Eastern time), continuing until its final broadcast on September 24, 1960, with the final years pre-recorded on color videotape.

Peanut gallery

A distinctive feature was the Peanut Gallery, onstage bleachers seating about 40 children. Each show began with Buffalo Bob asking, "Say kids, what time is it?" and the kids yelling in unison, "It's Howdy Doody Time!" Then the kids sang the show's theme song (set to the tune of "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay"):

It's Howdy Doody time,
It's Howdy Doody time,
Bob Smith and Howdy, too,
Say "Howdy do" to you.
Let's give a rousing cheer
'Cause Howdy Doody's here.
It's time to start the show
So kids, let's go!

It was thus one of the first television shows with audience participation as a major component.

In many of the 1949–54 episodes released on DVD by Mill Creek Entertainment in 2008, the children also can be heard singing jingles for commercial breaks, with Buffalo Bob or Howdy leading them and the lyrics appearing on screen. Colgate toothpaste, Halo Shampoo, 3 Musketeers candy bars, Tootsie Rolls and Poll Parrot Shoes are among the products advertised this way, as well as series-long sponsor Wonder Bread.

The popularity of Howdy Doody and its Peanut Gallery led executives at United Features Syndicate to use the name Peanuts for syndication of Charles M. Schulz's Li'l Folks comic strip, reportedly to the lifelong chagrin of Schulz.

Smith's absence

In September 1954, Bob Smith suffered a heart attack and was ordered to recuperate at home. NBC managed to keep the show going with guest hosts, including Gabby Hayes and New York disc jockey Ted Brown as Bison Bill, explaining to kids that Smith was vacationing at Pioneer Village. While kids generally were satisfied with the explanation, show sponsors insisted they wanted Smith himself to hawk their products. In response, NBC set up a special studio at Smith's home so he could appear live "from Pioneer Village" to do commercials. During Smith's absence from the show, Howdy was voiced by Allen Swift. Swift continued to voice the character for the remainder of the show's run, even after Smith's return in September 1955.

Final episode
The final episode, "Clarabell's Big Surprise", was broadcast on September 24, 1960. The hour-long episode was mostly a fond look back at all the highlights of the show's past. Meanwhile, in the midst of it all, Clarabell has what he calls a "big surprise." The rest of the cast attempts to find out the surprise throughout the entire show, with only Mayor Phineas T. Bluster succeeding and promising to keep it a secret. ("But", he says upon leaving, "it's not gonna be easy to keep a secret like this!")

Finally, in the closing moments, the surprise was disclosed through pantomime to Buffalo Bob and Howdy Doody; as it turned out, Clarabell the mute clown actually could talk. Amazed, Bob frantically told Clarabell to prove it, as this was his last chance. An ominous drum roll began as Clarabell faced the camera as it came in for an extreme closeup. His lips quivered as the drumroll continued. When it stopped, Clarabell simply said softly, "Goodbye, kids." A tear could be seen in his right eye as the picture faded to black, and some children in the Peanut Gallery could faintly be heard sobbing immediately before the credits music played.

The show quietly ended with a roll of credits over an empty, darkened set as "Auld Lang Syne" was played on a celeste, followed by an announcement that The Shari Lewis Show would be seen in its place at that time next week followed by a spot for the TV series National Velvet.

The restored color videotape of the final broadcast is  available commercially.

Merchandising and licensing
Three Musketeers candy bars offered a promotion early in 1950 in which sending in 10 cents and one wrapper from a Three Musketeers bar obtained a Howdy Doody puppet. The show had two one-minute announcements about the promotion on consecutive weeks. The first announcement resulted in 80,000 requests; the second increased the total number of requests to 240,000.

A 1955 merchandise catalog had 24 pages showcasing the range of products licensed by the show. The extensive merchandising included the aforementioned puppet, toys and clothing, plus tie-ins with cereals and other food products. Dell published a comic book from 1950 to 1956 along with Little Golden Books and Tell-a-Tale books, many written by Doody head writer Edward Kean. In addition Dell scribe John Stanley contributed scripts for the comic book. Kean also did some scripting (along with Stan Lee) of a Sunday-only Doody comic strip through United Feature Syndicate which ran from October 15, 1950, to June 21, 1953. Milt Neil and Chad Grothkopf were the initial art team through December 3, 1950, after which Grothkopf handled the art solo.

Cartoon
UPA was hired to do an animated cartoon (Howdy Doody and his Magic Hat), which was the first directorial effort of Gene Deitch and long thought lost until a print turned up at the Library of Congress in 2010. On April 15 of that year, the film was posted online.

Home media
On February 20, 2001, NBC Home Video licensed Image Entertainment to release four individual discs, each containing four episodes. These shows came from the latter part of the series run, from 1957 to 1960. One show from April 1, 1953, was also included.

On November 4, 2008, Mill Creek Entertainment (under license from NBCUniversal) released Howdy Doody Show: 40 Episodes 1949–1954 on DVD in Region 1. The five-disc set features 40 of the best episodes from the series as selected by fans as well as the final color episode (also on the Image discs) and bonus features.

Early episodes of Howdy Doody are available in the public domain and are online for audiences to view.

Howdy Doody's return

The 1970s brought a wave of nostalgia interest in an idealized representation of the 1950s, and with it films such as American Graffiti and the TV show Happy Days. An episode of Happy Days was entitled "The Howdy Doody Show" (number 33 of the series; original airdate February 18, 1975) during the series' second season, having a Howdy Doody storyline featuring Smith as Buffalo Bob with actor Bob Brunner as Clarabell.

The New Howdy Doody Show
Shortly thereafter, Nicholson-Muir Productions (owned by Nick Nicholson and E. Roger Muir) acquired from NBC the rights to produce the New Howdy Doody Show, an attempt by Buffalo Bob and most of the old cast to recreate their past fame. For this incarnation, which aired in first-run syndication, the Howdy Doody marionette had actual hair in a contemporary 1970s style and was operated by puppeteer Pady Blackwood.

New cast members included:

 Nicholson Muir (portrayed by Bill LeCornec) – The flamboyant fictional producer of the show. He is named for the production company.
 Corny Cobb (portrayed by Nick Nicholson) – He is now working as a "prop man" rather than a shopkeeper.
 Jackie Davis (Himself) – The band leader.
 Happy Harmony (portrayed by Marilyn Patch, then Dr. Marilyn Plavocos Arnone) – A teacher in Doodyville who fills the same role as the Princess Summerfall Winterspring character.
 Lew Anderson returned as Clarabell.

Crew members:
 Art Director – Milt Neal
 Costumer – Valerie E. Naiman

It was staged before a larger Peanut Gallery of children and their parents originating from and taped in Florida. The revived series was not as successful as its predecessor, lasting only 130 episodes; the show debuted at the start of August 1976 and was canceled six months later at the end of January 1977.

Reruns of the show later aired on Sundays on Cozi TV. Recently, Amazon Prime began offering 20 episodes online.

It's Howdy Doody Time: A 40-Year Celebration
A decade later, the show celebrated its 40th anniversary with a two-hour syndicated TV special, It's Howdy Doody Time: A 40-Year Celebration, featuring Smith, Anderson, Nicholson and LeCornec, who reprised his former role of Chief Thunderthud.

Late in life, Bob Smith befriended New York-based fan Jack Roth, who already was quite familiar with Smith's gallery of puppet characters. Since Smith's death in 1998, Roth usually has provided the voice for Howdy in TV appearances and live venues. Actor-puppeteer Alan Semok, who was approached by Smith to re-create the Howdy marionette, also has voiced Howdy.

International versions
Like the later Sesame Street, Canadian, Cuban, and Mexican spin-off shows were licensed using local casts and duplicate puppets.

La Hora de Jaudi Dudi
In March 1953, the Kagran Corporation, the organization which produced the original Howdy Doody for NBC, started production on La Hora de Jaudi Dudi, a daily Spanish-language version of the programme filmed in Mexico City. The program aired over Canal de las Estrellas in Mexico and, beginning on April 27, CMQ-TV in Havana, Cuba. According to Billboard, the series featured a freckleless Howdy puppet and a new puppet named Don Burro. While the aim was to produce a series to distribute to the entirety of Latin America, the company halted production after six months due to unforeseen production difficulties (at the time, Mexican television programming was scarce and often improvised, unlike the American-influenced Cuban market, apart from the fact that Mexican broadcasters weren't interested in foreign production) and market considerations (until 1960, most South American countries did not have television services or supermarkets; by 1953, the only ones in the region were located in Havana and Lima, Peru). 96 half-hour episodes were filmed.

Cuban television later launched its own local version, named Club Chirikin, which lasted through 1959 or early 1960 over CMQ. It was a Monday-Saturday show produced by Stone Associates, a company formed by former Kagran president Martin Stone.

The Canadian Howdy Doody Show
The Canadian Howdy Doody Show was produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and first aired on November 15, 1954. The CBC built its own Doodyville in a Toronto studio, and the show was set in Canada's north. It was more low-budget than its American counterpart, with less raucous plots and fewer villainous villains, as well as a more educational orientation.

Most of the puppet characters, including Phineas T. Bluster, the cranky mayor and chief killjoy of Doodyville, Dilly Dally, a foolish carpenter who was usually the butt of Bluster's plots, Flub-a-dub, a beast with a duck's head, cat's whiskers, and the parts of several other animals, Heidi Doody, Howdy's sister, and Howdy himself, of course, were retained from the U.S. production.

But it had some major differences from its American cousin. Other puppets included Percival, a parrot, and Mr. X, who zipped through time and space in his "whatsis box." The show had Howdy and Clarabell, but most of the human performers differed in the CBC version. There was no Buffalo Bob, for instance. The show's host was Timber Tom, a forest ranger, played by Peter Mews.

Mews later appeared in the films The Unforeseen, Folio and First Performance. He also appeared on television in the 1954 production of Delilah, and the 1974 mini-series The National Dream. One of his most notable works was as Matthew Cuthbert in the Charlottetown Festival's production of Anne of Green Gables, which he played for over twenty years. Peter Mews died on November 24, 1984, at the age of 63.

Clarabell was played by Alfie Scopp. Like the American Clarabell, he communicated in mime, by honking horns on his belt, and by squirting seltzer.

Scopp was born in London England in 1919, and came to Canada with his family when they immigrated to Montreal. Scopp has had a long and glorious career in both television and film. One of his most notable roles was the bookseller Avram in the 1971 film Fiddler on the Roof. He is also known for being the voice of "Charlie-in-the-Box" on the 1964 television Christmas special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Toby Tarnow played Princess Pan of the Forest, generally referred to as Pan. Tarnow was born in Gravelbourg Saskatchewan in 1937. She started studying acting at the Lorne Green Academy of Radio Arts at the age of eight, and by the age of ten she was already performing professionally on CBC radio. In 1954, she became the first actress to play Anne in the live televised production of the musical adaptation of Anne of Green Gables.

Following her role as Princess Pan on Howdy Doody, she had a recurring role on the CBC children's program Mr. Dressup (the spinoff from Fred Rogers' Misterrogers, after he took his neighborhood to Pittsburgh).  Tarnow's wide career encompassed radio, television, film, theater, and writing.

After moving to the United States, she founded the Riverbend School of Theater Arts for the Boys and Girls Club in New Hampshire. In 2010, she was awarded the Children and Youth Theater Award by the New Hampshire Theater Awards.

Barbara Hamilton was Willow the Witch, an absent-minded white witch with a good heart. Known for her work on Canadian stage and television, she was once labelled the funniest woman in Canada.

Born in Kingston Ontario, Hamilton attended the University of Toronto before embarking on a career in theatre arts. Her first big break came with a role in Arsenic and Old Lace at Toronto's historic Royal Alexandra Theatre. From there, she went on to perform in theatres across the country, in works that ranged from classical tragedies to modern comedies.

She originated the role of Marilla Cuthbert in both the Canadian and London West End productions of Anne of Green Gables, and was later a regular on the CBC's Road to Avonlea, and appeared in many other roles in film and television.

Larry D. Mann played good-natured pirate Cap'n Scuttlebutt. In Canada, the Cap'n was a live character, unlike the American Cap'n, which was a puppet. Mann was also the voice of Flub-a-Dub on the show.

Mann was a character actor whose face and acting were often recognizable. Born in Toronto on December 18, 1922, Mann was a disc jockey on radio station 1050 CHUM before he began his acting career. In his four decades of performing, Mann's many credits included Get Smart, Gunsmoke, The Man from Uncle, Hill Street Blues, and The Dukes of Hazzard, to mention just a few of his TV appearances. Two of his most prominent movie roles were In the Heat of the Night (1967) and The Sting (1973). Larry Mann died in Los Angeles California on January 6, 2014, at the age of 91.

Another famous person that appeared on the Canadian Howdy was the famous singer and later Broadway star Robert Goulet. He played the character Trapper Pierre.

The Canadian show had one other Princess, named Haida, who had the powers of a Medicine Man. The character was played by actress Caryl McBain. Other characters on the show included Jean Cavall as Papa La Touke and Drew Thompson as Mendel Mason.

Some sources credit James Doohan (Scotty on the original Star Trek) as being the first host of the show, playing Ranger Bill for a short time at the beginning of the series. As the story goes, after the chief forest ranger called him away to fight a forest fire in November 1954, Timber Tom, played by Peter Mews, took his place. However, in his autobiography Doohan never credits himself in the role. And the show's first public episode was November 15, so his time on the show was probably very short-lived.

Another actress started out playing Princess Pan in 1954. That was Maxine Miller, who later went on to play Nurse Farmer in the first three seasons of Misterrogers, the previously mentioned Canadian precursor to Mister Rogers' Neighborhood in the U.S. She has since appeared in over 120 movies and television shows.

A young William Shatner (later to go on to fame as Star Trek's Captain Kirk). would in 1954 be featured on the show as the character Ranger Bob.

One of the shows characters was named Mr. X. Not to be confused with the American Howdy Doody character with the same name, the Canadian Mr. X would teach history to the children watching. To do so, he would travel through space and time in what he called his "Whatsis Box".

The actors who voiced the different puppet characters on the Canadian Howdy Doody Show included Claude Rae (Howdy Doody, Phineas T. Bluster and Mr. X), Jacqueline White (Howdy Doody), Norma MacMillan (Heidi Doody), Donna Miller (Prunella Bluster and Heidi Doody), and Jack Mather (Dilly Dally, Percival Parrot, and other characters). And Larry Mann, who already had experience working with puppets with CBC's Uncle Chichimus, was the voice of Flub-a-dub. The puppeteers who worked the strings were Hal and Renée Marquette.

In addition to the adventures of the citizens of Doodyville and the Peanut Gallery, the show also featured film presentation on nature or travel. The scripts were adapted by Cliff Braggins, who also wrote music for the show. Quentin Maclean provided organ music. The program was produced by Paddy Sampson. After nearly five years on the air, the CBC decided to cancel the show to develop children's programming of its own. The Canadian Howdy Doody's last broadcast was on June 26, 1959.

Cultural references
In the musical Little Shop of Horrors, during the song "Somewhere That's Green", the character Audrey sings, "The kids play Howdy Doody as the sun sets in the west".

Pee-wee's Playhouse drew from Howdy Doody during its successful run on CBS from 1986 to 1991.

In the 2008 film Hellboy II: The Golden Army, the character Hellboy is seen watching an episode of Howdy Doody in a flashback scene of him as a child. The show is referenced again when Hellboy encounters the titular Golden Army at the film's climax.

In "Wally's Gang", a 1989 episode of Hard Time on Planet Earth, Control shows Jesse the Howdy Doody intro as an example of Earth's "most highly revered" electronic teachers.

In the 1988 film Scrooged, Bill Murray witnesses himself as a child watching the show on Christmas Eve in the mid-1950s.

The 1990 film Back to the Future Part III features the Howdy Doody opening.

In the 2008 film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Indiana Jones stumbles into a nuclear test facility invented by the Soviets disguised as American testers where the show is playing in one of the houses. He takes cover in a refrigerator as the explosion slowly drowns out the sound of the Howdy Doody theme song.

References

Bibliography

External links

 Howdy Doody and his Magic Hat (Little Golden Books adaptation)
 Howdy Doody and the Magic Lamp (a Tell-a-Tale book)

 Howdy Doody—Canadian Communication Foundation
 Howdy Doody Replicas — Czech Marionettes
 Guide to the Ralph MacPhail, Jr. Howdy Doody Collection, 1903–2018 SPEC.TRI.HDC at the Thompson Library Jerome Lawrence & Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute

1940s American children's television series
1947 American television series debuts
1940s Western (genre) television series
1950s American children's television series
1950s Western (genre) television series
1960 American television series endings
1960s American children's television series
1960s Western (genre) television series
Black-and-white American television shows
CBC Television original programming
English-language television shows
Western (genre) heroes and heroines
Television shows set in circuses
Television shows about clowns
NBC original programming
Peabody Award-winning television programs
Television shows adapted into comics
American television shows featuring puppetry
Television series by Nicholson-Muir Productions
Television series by Universal Television
Television shows filmed in New York City

Howdy Doody


Burroway is a bounded rural locality to the north of Narromine township and east of Buddah in New South Wales, Australia.
  The area at Latitude 32° 05' 00" S and Longitude 148° 16' 00" E is roughly equivalent to the cadastral parishes of Burroway and Emogandry in the county of Ewenmar and is in Narromine Shire.

The area is characterised by agricultural activities, predominantly grazing,
and in the 2011 Australian Census had a population of 364: 54.1% male and 45.9% female with an average age of 44 years. English was the first language of 90.6% of the population and Anglican (32.6%) and Catholic (28.7%) were the main religions. The median household income is $1294.00 per week.

The topography is flat and predominantly cleared of vegetation, with Timbrebongie Falls, Ewenmar Creek and the Macquarie River the main geographic features.

References

Populated places in New South Wales

Burroway, New South Wales


Springer Science+Business Media, commonly known as Springer, is a German multinational publishing company of books, e-books and peer-reviewed journals in science, humanities, technical and medical (STM) publishing.

Originally founded in 1842 in Berlin, it expanded internationally in the 1960s, and through mergers in the 1990s and a sale to venture capitalists it fused with Wolters Kluwer and eventually became part of Springer Nature in 2015. Springer has major offices in Berlin, Heidelberg, Dordrecht, and New York City.

History
Julius Springer founded Springer-Verlag in Berlin in 1842 and his son Ferdinand Springer grew it from a small firm of 4 employees into Germany's then second-largest academic publisher with 65 staff in 1872. In 1964, Springer expanded its business internationally, opening an office in New York City. Offices in Tokyo, Paris, Milan, Hong Kong, and Delhi soon followed.

In 1999, the academic publishing company BertelsmannSpringer was formed after the media and entertainment company Bertelsmann bought a majority stake in Springer-Verlag. In 2003, the British investment groups Cinven and Candover bought BertelsmannSpringer from Bertelsmann. They merged the company in 2004 with the Dutch publisher Kluwer Academic Publishers which they bought from Wolters Kluwer in 2002, to form Springer Science+Business Media.

In 2006, Springer acquired Humana Press.

Springer acquired the open-access publisher BioMed Central in October 2008 for an undisclosed amount.

In 2009, Cinven and Candover sold Springer to two private equity firms, EQT Partners and Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, confirmed in February 2010 after the competition authorities in the US and in Europe approved the transfer.

In 2011, Springer acquired Pharma Marketing and Publishing Services (MPS) from Wolters Kluwer.

In 2013, the London-based private equity firm BC Partners acquired a majority stake in Springer from EQT and GIC for $4.4 billion.

In January 2015, Holtzbrinck Publishing Group / Nature Publishing Group and Springer Science+Business Media announced a merger. in May 2015 they concluded the transaction and formed a new joint venture company, Springer Nature with Holtzbrinck in the majority 53% share and BC Partners retaining 47% interest in the company.

Products
In 1996, Springer launched electronic book and journal content on its SpringerLink site.

SpringerImages was launched in 2008. In 2009, SpringerMaterials, a platform for accessing the Landolt-Börnstein database of research and information on materials and their properties, was launched.

AuthorMapper is a free online tool for visualizing scientific research that enables document discovery based on author locations and geographic maps, helping users explore patterns in scientific research, identify literature trends, discover collaborative relationships, and locate experts in several scientific/medical fields.

Springer Protocols contained a collection of laboratory protocols, recipes that provide step-by-step instructions for conducting experiments, which in 2018 was made available in SpringerLink instead.

Book publications include major reference works, textbooks, monographs and book series; more than 168,000 titles are available as e-books in 24 subject collections.

Open access
Springer is a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association. For some of its journals, Springer does not require its authors to transfer their copyrights, and allows them to decide whether their articles are published under an open-access license or in the traditional restricted licence model. While open-access publishing typically requires the author to pay a fee for copyright retention, this fee is sometimes covered by a third party. For example, a national institution in Poland allows authors to publish in open-access journals without incurring any personal cost but using public funds.

Controversies
In 1938, Springer-Verlag was pressed to apply Nazi principles on the journal Zentralblatt MATH. Tullio Levi-Civita, who was Jewish, was forced out from the editorial board, and Otto Neugebauer resigned in protest along with most of the rest of the board.

In 2014, it was revealed that 16 papers in conference proceedings published by Springer had been computer-generated using SCIgen. Springer subsequently retracted all papers from these proceedings. IEEE had removed more than 100 fake papers from its conference proceedings.

In 2015, Springer retracted 64 papers from 10 of its journals it had published after a fraudulent peer review process was uncovered.

Manipulation of bibliometrics
According to Goodhart's law and concerned academics like the signatories of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, commercial academic publishers benefit from manipulation of bibliometrics and scientometrics like the journal impact factor, which is often used as a proxy of prestige and can influence revenues, including public subsidies in the form of subscriptions and free work from academics.

Seven Springer Nature journals, which exhibited unusual levels of self-citation, had their journal impact factor of 2019 suspended from Journal Citation Reports in 2020, a sanction which hit 34 journals in total.

Selected imprints

Adis International
Apress
BioMed Central
Chemistry Central (defunct)
PhysMath Central (defunct)
Birkhäuser Verlag
Current Medicine Group
Humana Press
Infochem
Kluwer Academic Publishers
D. Reidel (defunct)
Plenum Publishers
SpringerOpen
Springer Gabler
Springer Praxis Books
 (formerly  (SAV))
Springer Vieweg

Selected publications
Encyclopaedia of Mathematics
Ergebnisse der Mathematik und ihrer Grenzgebiete (book series)
Graduate Texts in Mathematics (book series)
Grothendieck's Séminaire de géométrie algébrique
The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology
Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics (book series)
Zentralblatt MATH
MRS Bulletin

See also

List of publishers
Media concentration

References

External links

Academic publishing companies
Pan-European media companies
Computer book publishing companies
Commercial digital libraries
Publishing companies of Germany
Publishing companies established in 1842
Companies disestablished in 2015
1842 establishments in Prussia
Multinational companies headquartered in Germany
Multinational publishing companies
German digital libraries
German companies established in 1842
German companies disestablished in 2015

Springer Science+Business Media


Quiz Show (onscreen title: "The Kee Games Quiz Show") is a two-player arcade game by Kee Games, a company originally established by Atari, Inc. The game was originally released in 1976. A computerized version of a quiz show, the game presents multiple choice answers to questions from a range of categories.

Gameplay
The game asks the player questions, with the player pressing the corresponding button to answer. Questions are multiple choice, chosen from a pool of 1000 questions in four categories: people, sports, movie, and potpourri. Categories are chosen prior to the game's start. Points are awarded for a correct answer, with point deductions for incorrect answers. Bonus points are also awarded, and are based on the length of time it takes to answer the question. At the end of game play, the player is given a rating of Dunce, Lucky, Smart, or Genius based on their score.

Technology
The game is housed in a custom cabinet that includes two sets (one set per player) of four buttons  on each side of the monitor. The game PCB uses a Signetics 2650 CPU, with all questions and answers stored on a removable 8-track audio cassette tape that is streamed to the game.

Quiz Show is believed to be the first game to utilize the now well-known "arcade font". The 8×8 monospaced typeface was later used in Sprint 2, as well as in many arcade games by other manufacturers.

References

Arcade video games
Arcade-only video games
Quiz video games
1976 video games
Atari arcade games
Video games developed in the United States

Quiz Show (video game)


Wasabi Tuna is a 2003 independent Cafe Entertainment Studios action comedy film starring Jason London, Barney Cheng, Tim Meadows, Antonio Sabàto, Jr., Alanna Ubach, Guillermo Díaz, Alexis Arquette, Megan Cavanagh, and Arturo Gil. Anna Nicole Smith is featured as herself.

Directed and produced by Lee Friedlander, the screenplay was written by Celia Fox, who also executive produced.

Wasabi Tuna premiered on August 20, 2003. It was issued on DVD on October 28, 2005, by Indican Pictures.

Plot
This camp screwball comedy of errors, that includes many over-the-top stereotypes, is set at Halloween against the backdrop of West Hollywood, California.

Five friends, interior designer Evan (played by London); interior designer Harvey (played by Cheng); stockbroker Dave (played by Meadows); spinning instructor Fredrico (played by Sabàto); and Emme (played by Ubach), a sassy young woman obsessed with style and classic movies, have all been anticipating the West Hollywood Halloween Parade on Santa Monica Boulevard, which is the biggest and brashest block party of the year. Their annual tradition of joining the festivities in outrageous costumes has become part of local legend.

It is the night before Halloween, however, and they still have not decided what to be. Evan and Harvey, who are femme gay boyfriends and business partners, have come up with food-themed sushi costumes that everyone refers to as "wasabi tuna." Emme offers another suggestion — that they all dress up as gang members.

They all opt for the gang theme, but are unable to find the appropriate attire at the local stores. They then decide to seek out real life gang members in order to achieve the authentic, straight-from-the-hood look they want.

While doing interior design work for an extremely wealthy Armenian woman who is actually in the illegal drug trade, Harvey and Evan become unwitting drug couriers. After they are arrested, there is a comic scene at the WeHo sheriff's station with them attempting to talk their way out of trouble.

Dave goes to East L.A., where he comes across a real gang member named Romeo (played by Díaz). He makes a deal with Romeo to loan him his Porsche in exchange for his lowrider gang car. A case of mistaken identity makes a vengeful, rival gang get after them. There is a comic drive-by shooting scene. Also, by driving Romeo's lowrider they are unknowingly carrying an illegal cache of weapons.

Reality TV actress Anna Nicole Smith's (appearing as herself) pet dog, Sugar-Pie, is kidnapped. All is havoc, as a group of drag queens who dress like Smith, Santa Ana Anna (played by Arquette), Eenie Anna (played by Gil, who is a dwarf), Brown Sugar Anna and Hot Spicy Anna, believe that Harvey stole their idol's dog and band together to get Sugar-Pie back for Smith.

A wild chase ensues as gang members, drug dealers, drag queens, and the police force are after the partygoers. They end up in Chinatown, where an old Chinese man, Mr. Ling (also played by Cheng), is in partnership with the Armenian drug shrew. Everything culminates with the clash of personalities colliding in a feisty showdown. A free-for-all street fight, involving the gang members, drug dealers, undercover DEA detectives, a trio of female martial arts gymnasts and the Santa Ana Annas, erupts and everyone battles it out with flying fists, feet and wigs.

Anna Nicole Smith herself arrives and saves the day. As she shamelessly mocks herself, Smith clears up the Sugar-Pie mess, hands the drugs over to the police and invites the group to her Halloween party, where they change into their "wasabi tuna" costumes.

Soundtrack
The lead single, 'Nothing Like Cali,' by The Brüse Bros. [rappers Blu (Johnson Barnes) and Black (aka Donel Smokes)], is subsequently also found on the 2003 unreleased project, 'The Brüse Brothers Academy LP,'''  on the DME Music (now, Dimond Mind Recordings'') label.

References

External links

Wasabi Tuna at Rotten Tomatoes
Wasabi Tuna at Yahoo! Movies
Wasabi Tuna Photo Gallery
Screenwriter's Utopia - Celia Fox Talks WASABI TUNI
DVD Verdict Review - Wasabi Tuna (archived on March 3, 2016)

2003 films
2000s action comedy films
2003 comedy films
Drag (entertainment)-related films
2000s English-language films
American action comedy films
Hood comedy films
2000s American films
English-language action comedy films

Wasabi Tuna


The Valerie Collective was founded as a musical cooperation in Nantes, France, in 2007 by David Grellier and his friends and colleagues. Various acts in Valerie include The Outrunners, Minitel Rose, Anoraak, Maethelvin, all from Nantes as well as Russ Chimes from London and DVAS from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Other artists included Keenhouse and Electric Youth. The hymn of the collective is "West Coast Valerie", a remix of the TV series Côte Ouest.

The Valerie Collective is described as "responsible for some of the very best original electronic music now coming out of France", was created as a way to foster musical talent, by providing opportunities for collaboration among artists, also connecting them through blogs and other internet channels. The collective is characterised by a "retro-futurist", "romantic blend of 1980s inspired electro" or synthwave.

Some of the works are released under the Valerie own record label, whereas others are released under various labels like FVTVR, Endless Summer Recordings, Believe Digital, Flexx, Free Danger. The label Endless Summer Recordings also prepared a compilation album in 2009 entitled Valerie and Friends joining a great number of artists in the project.

References

Synthwave groups
Electronic music organizations
French electronic musicians
2007 establishments in France

Valerie Collective


Alan Tunbridge is an English artist, book dust-jacket illustrator and songwriter.

Life and work
Normally painting in oils, Alan Tunbridge has also designed a great number of book dust-jacket illustrations, mainly in Scraperboard.

Many of his songs have been recorded by the folk and Country blues singer and guitarist Wizz Jones. With Jones, Tunbridge ran the MOJO Folk club at the King's Arms pub in Putney, South London in the early 1960s. Often he wrote the words spontaneously to Wizz Jones' chord sequences. His songs are also in the repertoires of Ralph McTell, John Renbourn, Maggie Holland and others. McTell was inspired by Tunbridge's lyrics of the evocative "National Seven" to tread the road which bears this name down to the south of France. The title of Bert Jansch's biography Dazzling Stranger originated from the title of a Tunbridge song.

Tunbridge spent a number of years studying the teachings of the mystic G. I. Gurdjieff (the Fourth Way) with John G. Bennett at Coombe Springs, and later spent time with the Sufi teacher Idries Shah. In 1997 Tunbridge contributed illustrations to Shah's collection of folktales, World Tales, illustrating the story of Mushkil Gusha.

He lived in Sydney, Australia, for many years. He no longer writes songs. From 1999 to 2009 he focused on using his writing and design skills to help develop the Schizophrenia Research Institute in Australia, of which he was a founding Director. This commitment was undertaken because his eldest son became affected by the illness. He retired from this role in 2009 to pursue his painting activities and to write his autobiography, Noose of Light, which was published in 2015. He now lives in Ubud, Bali.

Recorded songs
Alan Tunbridge's recorded songs include:

 Dazzling Stranger
 See How the Time is Flying
 The Legendary Me
 When I Cease to Care
 Nobody Told You So
 Beggar Man
 Slow Down to My Speed
 Stick a Little Label on It
 Which of Them You Love the Best
 City of the Angels
 The Raven †
 Find a Man for You Girl
 Mary Go 'Round
 Deep Water †
 When You're Gone
 National Seven
 Second-Hand Mini-Me
 The Grapes of Life
 Massacre at Béziers
 Pictures
 Teapot Blues †
 Earls Court Breakdown

† jointly with Wizz Jones

References

External links

21st-century English painters
English male painters
English male songwriters
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
21st-century English male artists

Alan Tunbridge


Andrea del Castagno () or Andrea di Bartolo di Bargilla (;  – 19 August 1457) was an Italian Renaissance painter in Florence, influenced chiefly by Masaccio and Giotto di Bondone. His works include frescoes in Sant'Apollonia in Florence and the painted equestrian monument of Niccolò da Tolentino (1456) in Florence Cathedral. He in turn influenced the Ferrarese school of Cosmè Tura, Francesco del Cossa and Ercole de' Roberti.

Life

Early years

Andrea del Castagno was born at Castagno, a village near Monte Falterona, not far from Florence. During the war between Florence and Milan, he lived in Corella, returning to his home after its end. In 1440 he moved to Florence under the protection of Bernadetto de' Medici. Here he painted the portraits of the citizens hanged after the Battle of Anghiari on the facade of the Palazzo del Podestà, gaining the nickname of Andrea degli Impiccati.

Little is known about his training, though it has been hypothesised that he apprenticed under Fra Filippo Lippi and Paolo Uccello. In 1440–1441 he executed the fresco of the Crucifixion with Saints in the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, whose perspective-oriented construction and figures shows the influence of Masaccio.

In 1442 he was in Venice where he executed frescoes in the San Tarasio Chapel of the church of San Zaccaria. Later he also worked in St Mark's Basilica, leaving a fresco of the Death of the Virgin (1442–1443).

Back in Florence, he designed a stained window depicting the Deposition for the Duomo. On 30 May 1445 he became a member of the Guild of the Medicians. From the same year is the fresco of Madonna and Child with Saints in the Contini Bonacossi Collection (Uffizi).

The Last Supper

In 1447 Castagno worked in the refectory of the Benedictine nuns at Sant'Apollonia in Florence, painting, in the lower part, a fresco of the Last Supper, accompanied above by other scenes portraying the Passion of Christ: the Crucifixion, Entombment, and Resurrection, which are now damaged. This combination of scenes is not known to have been represented before. He also painted a lunette in the convent's cloister, depicting a Pietà. Many important Florentine families had daughters in the convent at Sant'Apollonia, so painting there probably brought Andrea to their attention.

The Last Supper displays Andrea del Castagno's talents at their best. The detail and naturalism of this fresco show the ways in which he departed from earlier artistic styles. It is likely that Leonardo da Vinci was already familiar with this work before he painted his own Last Supper in a more dramatic form to contrast with the stillness of these works, so that more emotion would be displayed.

Late activity
In 1449–1450 he painted the Assumption with Saints Julian and Miniato for the main altar (in the Saint Julian Chapel) of the church of San Miniato fra le Torri in Florence (now in Berlin).

In the same years he collaborated with Filippo Carducci to paint a series of Illustrious People for the Villa Carducci at Legnaia. These include Pippo Spano, Farinata degli Uberti, Niccolò Acciaioli, Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, the Cumaean Sibyl, Esther and Tomyris.

Also from around 1450 is the Crucifixion in London, as well as the David with the Head of Goliath and the Portrait of a Man, both in Washington.  Between January 1451 and September 1453 he completed the frescoes of Scenes of the Life of the Virgin left unfinished by Domenico Veneziano in the church of Sant'Egidio, Florence (now lost). In October Filippo Carducci commissioned him to paint frescoes for his villa at Soffiano, of which today an Eve and a ruined Madonna with Child survive.

In 1455 Andrea del Castagno worked in the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata (frescoes with the Trinity with Saints Jerome, Paula and Eustochium and Saint Julian and the Redeemer, the former showing a stressed realism). A Crucifixion for Sant'Apollonia from those years is also attributed to him. In 1456 he executed the fresco of the Equestrian Monument of Niccolò da Tolentino in the Duomo of Florence, paralleling the similar painting by Paolo Uccello portraying Sir John Hawkwood.

Supposed murderer
Giorgio Vasari, an artist and biographer of the Italian Renaissance, alleged that Castagno murdered the artist Domenico Veneziano, but this is impossible, since Veneziano died in 1461, four years after Castagno died of the plague. It has been suggested that Vasari was confusing this murder case with another one involving a "Domenico di Matteo" who was killed by an "Andreino" in 1448, but the archival record shows that this is a misreading: "A cursory examination reveals two things: first, that the name of the dead painter is not Domenico di Matteo, but Domenico di Marco; and second, and much more crucially, that there is no mention of him having been killed by a painter named Andrea or Andreino." However, this wholly false story coloured Castagno's reputation for centuries. The sinister portrait engraving (apparently entirely invented) that prefaced his Life in the second edition of Vasari's Lives reflects this.

References

Further reading
 Horster, Marita. Andrea del Castagno: Complete Edition with a Critical Catalogue, 1980, Phaidon Press / Cornell University Press
 Spencer, John. Andrea del Castagno and His Patrons, 1991, Duke University Press

External links

 Andrea del Castagno at the National Gallery of Art

Italian Renaissance painters
Painters from Florence
Quattrocento painters
1420s births
1457 deaths
Fresco painters
Italian male painters
Painters from Tuscany
15th-century people from the Republic of Florence
15th-century deaths from plague (disease)
15th-century Italian painters

Andrea del Castagno


EMKA Racing was a British racing team founded in 1980 by Steve O'Rourke, manager of the band Pink Floyd. The team occasionally ran under the name of EMKA Productions, the name of O'Rourke's management company. The team's name comes from O'Rourke's two daughters, Emma and Katheryne. O'Rourke and EMKA concentrated on sports car racing with brief interludes into British Formula One until 1985 when the team was broken up before returning again in 1991. The team was finally dissolved in early 2004 following O'Rourke's death. The team had won the drivers championship for O'Rourke and Tim Sugden in the British GT Championship in 1997 and 1998.

History

1980–1985
Following Steve O'Rourke's years of amateur auto racing, he had succeeded in entering the 1979 24 Hours of Le Mans where he took a respectable 12th-place finish in a Ferrari 512BB. With Pink Floyd's scheduling becoming less of a conflict, O'Rourke was able to fully concentrate on racing and formed EMKA Racing, a division of his EMKA Productions record label, for the 1980 season. Debuting at the Six Hours of Silverstone, he took a seventh-place finish before taking 23rd at Le Mans.

Now established, O'Rourke purchased a BMW M1 and signed driver Derek Bell as his co-driver. Collaborating with Michael Cane Racing the team took a second-place finish at Silverstone before suffering problems at Le Mans with drivers David Hobbs and Eddie Jordan, future owner of Jordan Grand Prix. For Brands Hatch, the team took a third-place finish although O'Rourke himself did not drive the car.

For 1982, Derek Bell was replaced on the team by Nick Mason, drummer for Pink Floyd, who had been participating the past few years with the Dorset Racing team. The team did not see much success. In the same year, O'Rourke and EMKA also entered the British Formula One series for two races with a Williams FW07, scoring a third place at Thruxton Circuit.

For 1983, EMKA's success was recognised by Aston Martin, with the two reaching an agreement to run sportscars built by Michael Cane Racing and powered by Aston Martin engines. The first chassis, known as an EMKA C83/1, was designed by Len Bailey and used a production-based Aston Martin V8 engine as its powerplant. O'Rourke was joined in the cockpit by Tiff Needell and took 17th place at Le Mans in their debut year.

For 1985 the EMKA ASTON-MARTIN was modified by Michael Cane Racing with design work being done by Richard Owen and continued support from Aston Martin. O'Rourke and Needell took an eleventh-place finish at Le Mans which saw the entry briefly leading the race in the opening hours. The EMKA Aston Martin failed to finish any of the other races it appeared at that season. Steve O'Rourke decided to take a break from international motorsport.

1991–2003
O'Rourke would briefly return to racing in 1993, entering an old Porsche 935 in the new British GT Championship. However come 1995 he would bring EMKA Racing back full-time. Initially using his 935, he later purchased a new Porsche 911 GT2, which saw an eleventh-place finish at Silverstone in the BPR Global GT Series event. Joined by Guy Holmes, he would participate in the bulk of the 1996 BPR Global GT Series season, with best finishes of 18th at both Monza and Paul Ricard. He also made his first return to Le Mans since 1985, although his car would last a mere 32 laps before retiring.

For 1997, EMKA Racing would return to the British GT Championship. O'Rourke and co-driver Tim Sugden would take a best finish of second at Donington Park en route to taking the GT2 class drivers championships by the end of the season. With this success, O'Rourke made the decision to move to the more powerful GT1 class for 1998, purchasing a used McLaren F1 GTR. The team managed two wins in British GT at Oulton Park and Spa-Francorchamps, again earning them the championship in their class. The duo would also be joined by Bill Auberlen for Le Mans, earning a fourth-place finish, O'Rourke's personal best.

The team continued to campaign the McLaren F1 GTR in British GT in 1999, winning the round at Silverstone. Unfortunately the team would not be able to manage to win the drivers championship, finishing fifth instead. The top GT class would be abandoned in 2000 making the team's McLaren illegal, so O'Rourke joined EMKA Racing with fellow British team GTC Competition and moved the duo to the international FIA GT Championship's lower N-GT class, running a new Porsche 911 GT3-R. The team would have a best finish of second in class at the A1-Ring and would finish fourth in the teams championship.

The co-operation with GTC Competition and EMKA continued to campaign their Porsche in the N-GT class in 2001, again scoring their best result at the A1-Ring with a fourth-place finish in class. Unfortunately in the teams championship they managed to tie for eighth place, down from the previous year. The team would return again to British GT for 2002, with two third-place finishes at Brands Hatch and Castle Combe Circuit.

Citing health concerns, O'Rourke would retire towards the end of the 2002 season, with Martin Short taking over O'Rourke driving position alongside Tim Sugden as the team went into 2003. The team once again switched back to the FIA GT Championship's N-GT class, but with greater success. At the third round at Pergusa, the team won the N-GT class. This led to Porsche taking interest in the team and offering factory driver Emmanuel Collard. This led to a second class win at Anderstorp, and eventually fourth place in the N-GT team championship.

Demise
Mere days after the end of the FIA GT season, Steven O'Rourke would pass away in the United States due to a stroke. The team, which had received strong support from Porsche for preparation for the 2004 season, was unable to survive without O'Rourke's leadership. The team would fold prior to the start of the 2004 season, with its assets being sold off, including O'Rourke's racing cars such as his McLaren F1 GTR and the EMKA-badged Group C cars. Tim Sugden would also move on to the GruppeM team.

See also
EMKA Aston Martin

External links
 Aston Martin Picture Gallery – EMKA Aston Martin

Auto racing teams in the United Kingdom
Aston Martin
24 Hours of Le Mans teams
FIA GT Championship teams
British GT Championship teams
World Sportscar Championship teams
Auto racing teams established in 1980
Auto racing teams disestablished in 2004

EMKA Racing


Arnaq  or Egnock (died November 1577) was the name given by the English to an Inuk woman from what is now Baffin Island, Nunavut, who was taken hostage by Sir Martin Frobisher on his second journey to find the Northwest Passage. She, her infant son (named by the English as Nutaaq) and an Inuk man named as Kalicho were among the first Inuit and first indigenous people from North America to visit England and among the best documented of the Tudor period. They were brought back to the English port of Bristol at the end of September 1577 and died in November of the same year.

Life
Arnaq was most likely born in the Frobisher Bay area of Nunavut in the 16th century. The name used for her by her captors is very similar to the Inuit word for "woman" (ᐊᕐᓇᖅ arnaq), so her real name is unknown.

She and her twelve-month old son, Nutaaq, were amongst four Inuit brought to England against their will by Frobisher. According to the 1578 account of George Best, who accompanied the 1577 expedition, Arnaq was captured with her son on 1 August on the Hall Peninsula near Kodlunarn Island (Countess of Warwick Island), where the English were mining for what they supposed to be gold ore. Captain York of the expedition had come across an abandoned Inuit settlement in which he found items of European clothing he assumed came from five members of Frobisher's 1576 expedition who had disappeared further up Frobisher Bay. Captain York sought to capture some of the local Inuit to serve as hostages that could be exchanged for the missing men. However, after a bloody fight in which five or six Inuit men died, they only succeeded in capturing an old woman (who they let go) and Arnaq with her baby. Arnaq was then brought back to the main expedition, where she was introduced to another captive Inuit, Kalicho, later that day. Attempts to arrange a hostage exchange failed and all three of the Inuit were brought back to England when the expedition returned home on 23 August. They arrived at the port of Bristol in England around the end of September.

In England the three Inuit attracted considerable interest. Frobisher planned to present them to Queen Elizabeth and seems to have hoped that they might be taught English so that they could reveal more about their country and serve as interpreters on later expeditions. The family were taken to the mayor's house, Thomas Colston, and Kalicho performed numerous displays of his kayaking and hunting skills in Bristol harbour around 9 October. Four 'official' paintings were commissioned of Arnaq by Cornelis Ketel, a Flemish artist. Two of these paintings were later given to the Queen and were hung in Hampton Court Palace for many years. These paintings were later lost but paintings by the artist John White survived and were copied many times.

Kalicho died on 8 November, as a result of an infection stemming from broken ribs most likely sustained during his capture. After he had been given a post-mortem by Dr. Edward Dodding, Arnaq was obliged to witness his burial at St Stephen's Church in Bristol on 8 November 1577. Dodding commented on what he saw as her stoicism at Kalicho's fate. Dodding's motives for making Arnaq witness the funeral was because he wanted to ensure that Arnaq did not think that the English were cannibals. Dodding showed Arnaq dead human bones to illustrate his point.

Shortly after the funeral, Arnaq, became ill from what is thought to be measles. She died within days and was buried on the 12 November at St Stephen's Church. Kalicho and Arnaq were called Collichang and Egnock respectively in the church's burial records. Arnaq's death left Nutaaq an orphan. Nutaaq was given a nurse and taken to London for a prospective audience with Queen Elizabeth. Nutaaq also died, probably from measles. He was buried without record at St Olave's Church.

Legacy
Arnaq and her son were not the first people from the Americas to visit Europe. It is estimated that 200 may have visited France in the sixteenth century. However England was behind in transatlantic journeys and only a small number of people from the Americas had visited before Arnaq had arrived. Despite not living long, Arnaq, Nutaaq and Kalicho did become well known due to the pictures drawn of them. The most noted of these are by John White who may have been on Frobisher's 1577 voyage. Another two pictures were commissioned by Queen Elizabeth who was disappointed to have not seen 'Frobisher's Inuit'. Studies of the portraits show that Arnaq had facial tattoos and details can be noted of the parka she wore.

References

External links

1577 deaths
Inuit from the Northwest Territories
Immigrants to England
Year of birth unknown
Deaths from measles
Inuit from Nunavut
16th-century Canadian people

Arnaq


Raj Man Singh Chitrakar (; IAST: rāja māna siṃha citrakāra) (1797 – 1865) was a mid-19th century Nepalese artist, who worked for the British and Nepalese courts producing a large number of pictures. He especially contributed to the illustration of natural history subjects, particularly birds, and in his watercolor painting he introduced European styles into a traditional scene dominated by votive art.

Raj Man Singh was the first to apply the Western concepts of lighting and perspective, and is credited for the appearance of three-dimensional effects in Nepalese painting. Scholars have described him as a pioneer in Nepalese art, although largely unknown until Brian Houghton Hodgson's tutelage.

Art and background

Raj Man Singh was born in Kathmandu to a family of hereditary artists, the Newar caste of Chitrakar. Accordingly, he engaged in painting paubha paintings and other religious art. He came to the attention of Brian Houghton Hodgson, the British Resident stationed in Kathmandu who was also a scholar of the religions, languages, literature, ethnology and zoology of the Himalaya. Hodgson was looking for an artist to the make watercolor paintings of the birds and mammals he was studying for his collection, and he hired Raj Man Singh to do them.

Under Hodgson's guidance, the traditional artist, used to painting pictures of deities as per ancient texts, mastered the new technique of observing subjects in their natural habitat and making lifelike representations on paper. He produced thousands of works of remarkable quality for Hodgson from the 1820s to the 1850s.

Honors

The little-known Raj Man Singh has recently been recognized as a leading figure following revelations of his ground-breaking work. On 31 December 2012, the Postal Services Department of the government of Nepal issued two commemorative postage stamps showing a portrait of the artist to honor his contribution to the development of 19th century art in Nepal. The stamps also show examples of his watercolor paintings of birds and mammals.

See also

 Nepalese painting
 Newar people

References

1797 births
1865 deaths
Nepalese illustrators
Nepalese painters
Newar people
Artists from Kathmandu
Nepalese watercolourists
19th-century Nepalese painters

Raj Man Singh Chitrakar


Leonurus cardiaca, known as motherwort, is an herbaceous perennial plant in the mint family, Lamiaceae. Other common names include throw-wort, lion's ear, and lion's tail. Lion's tail is also a common name for Leonotis leonurus, and lion's ear, a common name for Leonotis nepetifolia. Originally from Central Asia and southeastern Europe, it is now found worldwide, spread largely due to its use as a herbal remedy.

Description
Leonurus cardiaca has a squarish stem which is clad in short hairs and is often purplish, especially near the nodes. The opposite leaves have serrated margins and are palmately lobed with long petioles; basal leaves are wedge shaped with three points while the upper leaves have three to five. They are slightly hairy above and greyish beneath. Flowers appear in leaf axils on the upper part of the plant and have three-lobed bracts. The calyx of each flower is bell-shaped and has five lobes. The corolla is irregular,  long, fused, long-tubed with two lips. The upper lip is convex and covered with white hairs and the lower lip is three-lobed and downward-curving and spotted with red. The flowers are pink to lilac in colour often with furry lower lips. There are four protruding stamens, two short and two longer, and the fruit is a four-chambered schizocarp. The plant grows to about  in height and blooms in mid to late summer.

Distribution and habitat
Motherwort is probably native to the southeastern part of Europe and central Asia where it has been cultivated since ancient times. Its natural habitat is beside roadsides, in vacant fields, waste ground, rubbish dumps and other disturbed areas. This plant prefers well drained soil and a partly shady location. Introduced to North America as a bee foraging plant and to attract bumble bees, this perennial herb is now considered invasive. It is hardy in USDA climate zones 4–8.

Folklore
Nicholas Culpeper considered motherwort useful for removing melancholy vapors from the heart, improving cheerfulness, and settling the wombs of mothers. In 15th century Europe, motherwort was considered by some herbalists to protect against evil spirits.

Chemistry

The herb contains the alkaloid leonurine. Among other chemical constituents, it also contains stachydrine, bitter iridoid glycosides (leonuride), diterpenoids, flavonoids (including rutin and quercetin), tannins, volatile oils, and vitamin A. Stachydrine is extracted from the leaves of Motherwort and has demonstrated various bioactivities for the treatment of fibrosis, cardiovascular diseases, cancers, uterine diseases, brain injuries, and inflammation.

References

Further reading

 Lust, John The Herb Book (1974) New York, New York: Bantam.
 Moore, Michael Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West (1979) Santa Fe, New Mexico: The Museum of New Mexico Press
 Weed, Susun S.  Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year (1986) Woodstock, New York.

External links

Lamiaceae
Flora of Europe
Flora of Asia
Medicinal plants
Entheogens
Plants described in 1753
Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus

Leonurus cardiaca


Jennifer "Jen" Psaki (; born Jennifer Rene Psaki; December 1, 1978) is an American television political analyst and former government official. A political advisor who served under both the Obama and Biden administrations, she served the Biden administration as the 34th White House press secretary until May 2022. A member of the Democratic Party, she previously served in the Obama administration as the White House deputy press secretary (2009); the White House deputy communications director (2009–2011); the spokesperson for the United States Department of State (2013–2015); and the White House communications director (2015–2017). Psaki was a political contributor for CNN from 2017 to 2020. As of March 2023, she hosts the talk-show Inside with Jen Psaki, on MSNBC.

Early life and education
Psaki, the eldest of three daughters, was born in New York City, New York, in 1978 to psychotherapist Eileen (née Dolan) Medvey and Dimitrios "James" R. Psaki, a retired real estate developer whose grandfather had emigrated from Greece in 1904 and whose grandmother was of Irish descent. Her parents married in 1976.

Psaki grew up in Stamford, Connecticut and graduated from Greenwich High School in 1996. In 2000, she graduated from the College of William & Mary with a degree in English and sociology. She is a member of the Chi Omega sorority. At William & Mary, Psaki was a competitive backstroke swimmer for the William & Mary Tribe athletic team for two years.

Career

Early career
Psaki began her career in 2001 with the re-election campaigns of Iowa Democrats Tom Harkin for the U.S. Senate and Tom Vilsack for governor. Psaki then became deputy press secretary for John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. From 2005 to 2006, Psaki served as communications director to U.S. representative Joseph Crowley and regional press secretary for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Obama administration
Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign of U.S. senator Barack Obama, Psaki served as traveling press secretary. After Obama won the election, Psaki followed Obama to the White House as deputy press secretary and was promoted to deputy communications director on December 19, 2009. On September 22, 2011, Psaki left this position to become senior vice president and managing director at the Washington, D.C., office of public relations firm Global Strategy Group.

In 2012, Psaki returned to political communications as press secretary for President Obama's 2012 reelection campaign. On February 11, 2013, Psaki became the spokesperson for the United States Department of State. Her hiring at the Department of State fueled speculation that she would replace White House press secretary Jay Carney when he left the White House, but, on May 30, 2014, it was announced that Josh Earnest would replace Carney. In 2015, she returned to the White House as communications director and stayed through the end of the Obama administration.

On February 7, 2017, Psaki began working as a political commentator on CNN.

White House press secretary

In November 2020, Psaki left CNN and joined the Biden–Harris transition team. Later that month, Psaki was named as the White House press secretary for the Biden administration.

She held her first press briefing on the evening of January 20, 2021, after the inauguration. On May 6, in an interview with former senior advisor to the president David Axelrod, Psaki suggested she would depart from the position of press secretary "in about a year from now". In October, Psaki was accused by a watchdog group of violating the Hatch Act for her comments on the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election. On November 2, Psaki announced that she had tested positive for COVID-19. After quarantining and fully recovering, she returned to work on November 12 and credited her vaccination status for her recovery without complications.

On March 22, 2022, Psaki tested positive for COVID-19 for the second time in six months and did not accompany President Biden on his trip to Europe. On April 1, Axios reported that Psaki would likely leave the White House "around May" for a job with MSNBC. On May 5, the White House announced she would be leaving the role on May 13, and named her principal deputy, Karine Jean-Pierre, as her replacement.

Later career
On May 24, 2022, MSNBC announced its hiring of Psaki as a contributor; the network stated that she would make appearances during its coverage of the 2022 midterms and 2024 presidential elections, and that a show hosted by Psaki was in development for Peacock. Psaki made her first television appearance after leaving her position as White House press secretary on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon discussing the Robb Elementary School shooting.

In February 2023, MSNBC announced that Psaki would host a new Sunday morning program, Inside with Jen Psaki, beginning on March 19, 2023. The program carries a focus on public policy issues. On September 25, 2023, the program took over MSNBC's Monday 8 p.m. Eastern prime time slot, which was previously a secondary timeslot for All In with Chris Hayes. Psaki had occasionally filled in as a substitute host for All In, prompting speculation.

Journalists at NBC News, the sister network of MSNBC, expressed anger and trepidation about Psaki's move to MSNBC, fearing that it would damage NBC's brand and "reinforce the impression, already well-established in opinion polls, that the news business in the US works hand-in-glove with political factions." Psaki negotiated the deal, along with a competing offer from CNN, while still serving in the office of press secretary. This led to concerns, including from NBC's own White House correspondent, Kristen Welker, that she could have shown favoritism toward her potential employers in order to secure her new role. Although other staffers have moved from the White House to cable news, the decision to make Psaki an anchor and not a political analyst was unusual.

Personal life
On May 8, 2010, Psaki married Greg Mecher, then chief of staff to Congressman Steve Driehaus. Later, Mecher served as chief of staff to Congressman Joe Kennedy. The couple met at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006. They have two children.

References

External links

 Archived copy of Psaki's official Twitter account from the Obama administration

|-

|-

1978 births
Living people
21st-century American women
American people of Greek descent
American people of Irish descent
American public relations people
Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign
Barack Obama 2012 presidential campaign
Biden administration personnel
CNN people
Connecticut Democrats
Greenwich High School alumni
John Kerry 2004 presidential campaign
MSNBC people
Obama administration personnel
People from Greenwich, Connecticut
People from Stamford, Connecticut
United States Department of State spokespeople
White House Communications Directors
White House Press Secretaries
William & Mary Tribe women's swimmers

Jen Psaki


A Mars sample-return (MSR) mission is a proposed mission to collect rock and dust samples on Mars and return them to Earth. Such a mission would allow more extensive analysis than that allowed by onboard sensors.

The most recent concepts are a NASA-ESA proposal; a CNSA proposal, Tianwen-3; a Roscosmos proposal, Mars-Grunt; and a JAXA proposal, Martian Moons eXploration (MMX). Although NASA and ESA's plans to return the samples to Earth are still in the design stage , samples have been gathered on Mars by the Perseverance rover.

Risks of cross-contamination of the Earth biosphere from returned Martian samples have been raised, though the risk of this occurring is considered to be extremely low.

Scientific value

Once returned to Earth, stored samples can be studied with the most sophisticated science instruments available. Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters in Washington, expect such studies to allow several new discoveries at many fields. Samples may be reanalyzed in the future by instruments that do not yet exist.

In 2006, the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group identified 55 important investigations related to Mars exploration. In 2008, they concluded that about half of the investigations "could be addressed to one degree or another by MSR", making MSR "the single mission that would make the most progress towards the entire list" of investigations. Moreover, it was reported that a significant fraction of the investigations could not be meaningfully advanced without returned samples.

One source of Mars samples is what are thought to be Martian meteorites, which are rocks ejected from Mars that made their way to Earth. , 356 meteorites had been identified as Martian, out of over 79,000 known meteorites. These meteorites are believed to be from Mars because their elemental and isotopic compositions are similar to rocks and atmospheric gases analyzed on Mars.

History

Before 1990

Returning from Mars appeared in technical literature when Apollo was still in development and the first spacecraft to fly past Mars had not yet launched, with an expectation that people would be on board for Mars ascent. The density of the Mars atmosphere remained unknown at that time, so the Lockheed engineering author reported the analysis of trajectory options over a range of aerodynamic drag conditions for a 15-ton launch vehicle to reach a rendezvous orbit.

At NASA, returning samples from Mars was studied jointly by the Langley Research Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the early 1970s during the time that the Viking Mars lander mission was in development, and a Langley author noted that the "Mars surface-to-orbit launch vehicle" would need high performance because its mass would "have a substantial impact on the mass and systems requirements" for earlier mission phases, delivery of that vehicle to Mars and launch preparations on Mars.

For at least three decades, scientists have advocated the return of geological samples from Mars. One early concept was the Sample Collection for Investigation of Mars (SCIM) proposal, which involved sending a spacecraft in a grazing pass through Mars's upper atmosphere to collect dust and air samples without landing or orbiting.

The Soviet Union considered a Mars sample-return mission, Mars 5NM, in 1975 but it was cancelled due to the repeated failures of the N1 rocket that would have launched it. Another sample-return mission, Mars 5M (Mars-79), planned for 1979, was cancelled due to complexity and technical problems.

In the mid-1980's, JPL mission planners noted that MSR had been "pushed by budgetary and other pressures into the '90s," and that the round trip would "impose large propulsion requirements." They presented a notional mass budget for a concept that would launch a 9.5-metric-ton payload from Earth, including a Mars orbiter for Earth return, and a lander having a 400-kg rover and a "Mars return vehicle" that would mass over 2 metric tons. A 20-kg sample canister would arrive at Earth containing 5 kg of samples including scientific-quality cores drilled from every type of Mars terrain.

In the late 1980s, multiple NASA centers contributed to a proposed Mars Rover Sample Return mission (MRSR).  As described by JPL authors, one option for MRSR relied on a single launch of a 12-ton package including a Mars orbiter and Earth return vehicle, a 700-kg rover, and a 2.7-ton Mars ascent vehicle (MAV) which would use pump-fed liquid propulsion for a significant mass saving. A 20-kg sample package on the MAV was to contain 5 kg of Mars soil. A Johnson Space Center author subsequently referred to a launch from Earth in 1998 with a MAV mass in the range 1400 to 1500 kg including a pump-fed first stage and a pressure-fed second stage.

1990 onward

The United States' Mars Exploration Program, formed after Mars Observer failure in September 1993, supported a Mars sample return. One architecture was proposed by Glenn J. MacPherson in the early 2000s.

In 1996, the possibility of life on Mars was raised when apparent microfossils were thought to have been found in Mars meteorite, ALH84001. This hypothesis was eventually rejected, but led to a renewed interest in a Mars sample return.

In the mid-1990s, NASA funded JPL and Lockheed Martin to study affordable small-scale MSR mission architectures including a concept to return 500 grams of Mars samples using a 100-kg MAV that would meet a small Mars orbiter for rendezvous and return to Earth. Robert Zubrin, a long-time advocate for human Mars missions, concluded in 1996 that the best approach to MSR would be launching directly to Earth using propellants made on Mars, because a rendezvous in Mars orbit would be too risky and he estimated that a direct-return MAV would mass 500 kg, too heavy to send to Mars affordably if fully fueled on Earth. International peer reviewers concurred. In 1997, a detailed analysis of conventional small-scale rocket technology (both solid and liquid propellant) found that known propulsion components would be too heavy to build a MAV as lightweight as several hundred kilograms and "The application of launch vehicle design principles to the development of new hardware on a tiny scale" was suggested.

In 1998, JPL presented a design for a two-stage pressure-fed liquid bipropellant MAV that would be 600 kilograms or less at Mars liftoff, intended for a MSR mission in 2005. The same JPL author collaborated on a notional single-stage 200-kg MAV intended to be made small by using pump-fed propulsion to permit lightweight low-pressure liquid propellant tanks and compact high-pressure thrust chambers. This mass advantage of pump-fed operation was applied to a conceptual 100-kg MAV having a mass budget consistent with reaching Mars orbit using monopropellant, partly enabled by the simplicity of a single tank, also applicable to Mars landing typically done with monopropellant. The high-pressure thrusters and pump had previously been demonstrated in the 1994 flight of an experimental 21-kg rocket.

As of late 1999, the MSR mission was anticipated to be launched from Earth in 2003 and 2005. Each was to deliver a rover and a Mars ascent vehicle, and a French supplied Mars orbiter with Earth return capability was to be included in 2005. The 140-kg MAV, "in the process of being contracted to industry" at that time, was to include telemetry on its first stage and thrusters that would spin the vehicle to 300 RPM before separation of the simplified lightweight upper stage. Atop each MAV, a 3.6-kg, 16-cm diameter spherical payload would contain 500 grams of samples and have solar cells to power a long-life beacon to facilitate rendezvous with the Earth return orbiter. The orbiter would capture the sample containers delivered by both MAVs and place them in separate Earth entry vehicles. This mission concept, considered by NASA's Mars Exploration Program to return samples by 2008, was cancelled following a program review.

In mid-2006, the International Mars Architecture for the Return of Samples (iMARS) Working Group was chartered by the International Mars Exploration Working Group (IMEWG) to outline the scientific and engineering requirements of an internationally sponsored and executed Mars sample-return mission in the 2018–2023 time frame.

In October 2009, NASA and ESA established the Mars Exploration Joint Initiative to proceed with the ExoMars program, whose ultimate aim is "the return of samples from Mars in the 2020s". ExoMars's first mission was planned to launch in 2018  with unspecified missions to return samples in the 2020–2022 time frame. The cancellation of the caching rover MAX-C in 2011, and later NASA withdrawal from ExoMars, due to budget limitations, ended the mission. The pull-out was described as "traumatic" for the science community.

In early 2011, the US National Research Council's Planetary Science Decadal Survey, which laid out mission planning priorities for the period 2013–2022, declared an MSR campaign its highest priority Flagship Mission for that period. In particular, it endorsed the proposed Mars Astrobiology Explorer-Cacher (MAX-C) mission in a "descoped" (less ambitious) form. This mission plan was officially cancelled in April 2011.

A key mission requirement for the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission was that it help prepare for MSR. The rover landed on 18 February 2021 in Jezero Crater to collect samples and store them in 43 cylindrical tubes for later retrieval.

Mars 2020 mission

The Mars 2020 mission landed the Perseverance rover in the Jezero crater in February 2021. It has collected multiple samples and will continue to do so, packing them into cylinders for later return in the MSR Campaign. Jezero appears to be an ancient lakebed, suitable for ground sampling. It is also assigned the task to return the samples directly to the Sample Return lander, considering its potential mission longevity.

From December 21, 2022, Perseverance started a campaign to deposit 10 of its collected samples to the backup depot, Three Forks to ensure if Perseverance runs into problems, the MSR campaign could still succeed.

Proposals

NASA–ESA

The NASA-ESA flagship plan is to return samples using three missions: a sample collection mission (Perseverance) launched in 2020 and currently operational, a sample retrieval mission (Sample Retrieval Lander + Mars ascent vehicle +  Sample Transfer arm + 2 Ingenuity class helicopters) launched in 2026 or 2028, and a return mission (Earth Return Orbiter) in 2026. The mission hopes to resolve the question of whether Mars once harbored life.

Although NASA and ESA's proposal is still in the design stage and facing significant cost overruns as of August 2023, the first leg of gathering samples is currently being executed by the Perseverance rover on Mars and the components of sample retrieval lander (second leg) are in testing phase on earth.

China
China has announced plans for a Mars sample-return mission to be called Tianwen-3. The mission would launch in late-2028, with a lander and ascent vehicle on a Long March 5 and an orbiter and return module launched separately on a Long March 3B. Samples would be returned to Earth in July 2031.

A previous plan would have used a large spacecraft that could carry out all mission phases, including sample collection, ascent, orbital rendezvous, and return flight. This would have required the super-heavy-lift Long March 9 launch vehicle. Another plan involved using Tianwen-1 to cache the samples for retrieval.

France
France has worked towards a sample return for many years. This included concepts of an extraterrestrial sample curation facility for returned samples, and numerous proposals. They worked on the development of a Mars sample-return orbiter, which would capture and return the samples as part of a joint mission with other countries.

Japan
On 9 June 2015, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) unveiled a plan named Martian Moons Exploration (MMX) to retrieve samples from Phobos or Deimos. Phobos's orbit is closer to Mars and its surface may have captured particles blasted from Mars. The launch from Earth is planned for September 2024, with a return to Earth in 2029. Japan has also shown interest in participating in an international Mars sample-return mission.

Russia

A Russian Mars sample-return mission concept is Mars-Grunt. It adopted Fobos-Grunt design heritage. 2011 plans envisioned a two-stage architecture with an orbiter and a lander (but no roving capability), with samples gathered from around the lander by a robotic arm.

Back contamination

Whether life forms exist on Mars is unresolved. Thus, MSR could potentially transfer viable organisms to Earth, resulting in back contamination — the introduction of extraterrestrial organisms into Earth's biosphere. The scientific consensus is that the potential for large-scale effects, either through pathogenesis or ecological disruption, is small. Returned samples would be treated as potentially biohazardous until scientists decide the samples are safe. The goal is that the probability of release of a Mars particle is less than one in a million.

The proposed NASA Mars sample-return mission will not be approved by NASA until the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process has been completed. Furthermore, under the terms of Article VII of the Outer Space Treaty and other legal frameworks, were a release of organisms to occur, the releasing nation(s) would be liable for any resultant damages.

The sample-return mission would be tasked with preventing contact between the Martian environment and the exterior of the sample containers.

In order to eliminate the risk of parachute failure, the current plan is to use the thermal protection system to cushion the capsule upon impact (at terminal velocity). The sample container would be designed to withstand the force of impact. To receive the returned samples, NASA proposed a custom Biosafety Level 4 containment facility, the Mars Sample-Return Receiving facility (MSRRF).

Other scientists and engineers, notably Robert Zubrin of the Mars Society, argued in the Journal of Cosmology that contamination risk is functionally zero leaving little need to worry. They cite, among other things, lack of any known incident although trillions of kilograms of material have been exchanged between Mars and Earth via meteorite impacts.

The International Committee Against Mars Sample Return (ICAMSR) is an advocacy group led by Barry DiGregorio, that campaigns against a Mars sample-return mission. While ICAMSR acknowledges a low probability for biohazards, it considers the proposed containment measures to be unsafe. ICAMSR advocates more in situ studies on Mars, and preliminary biohazard testing at the International Space Station before the samples are brought to Earth. DiGregorio accepts the conspiracy theory of a NASA coverup regarding the discovery of microbial life by the 1976 Viking landers. DiGregorio also supports a view that several pathogens – such as common viruses – originate in space and probably caused some mass extinctions and pandemics. These claims connecting terrestrial disease and extraterrestrial pathogens have been rejected by the scientific community.

See also

 Timeline of Solar System exploration

References

External links
 Mars Sample return media reel produced by NASA and JPL (video)

Chinese space probes
European Space Agency space probes
Missions to Mars
Proposed astrobiology space missions
Proposed NASA space probes

Mars sample-return mission


The Cover is a news source that covers the covered bond market and provides subscribers with a dedicated daily online news service and breaking news on covered bond issues as they are launched. The purpose of The Cover is to provide participants in the covered bond market with a club publication of their own.

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The Cover is published by the EuroWeek group, part of Euromoney Institutional
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Notes

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Daily Mail and General Trust
Magazines with year of establishment missing

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