The pandemic shuttered our offices and made the idea of venturing anywhere more ambitious than a grocery store seem a perilous journey. Any trip that required a flight or a stroll among the masses — even masked — seemed an unreasonable risk.

So is it any wonder, in our longing to get away from this virus-riddled existence, that we have found an escape in space? We have hitched a virtual ride on the rocket that will take the intrepid Mars rover, Perseverance (of course that’s its name), to the red planet. This $2.4bn mission launched on Thursday, and not a moment too soon...

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