It looks like not even NASA can mess around with the COVID-19 disease that keeps infecting people throughout the world. The pandemic has infected until now over 219,000 people and killed almost 9000. The most affected countries are the mainland China, followed by Italy, Iran, Spain, and Germany.
NASA has two employees tested positive for the new coronavirus, and thus it decided to elevate its centers to Stage 3, which means that almost all of the space agency’s staff is forced to work from home.
Not everybody will have to work remotely
NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said that there is one category of employees who are not forced to provide work from home. Namely, the mission-essential personnel, but all the other employees will have to provide their part of the job from home. Bridenstine declared:
This evening, NASA leadership has decided to elevate all centers and facilities to Stage 3 of NASA’s Response Framework,
However, NASA’s administrator suggested that this tough situation will end:
Effective immediately, all employees and contractors will move to mandatory telework until further notice. Mission-essential personnel will continue to be granted access onsite.
This is not something new to the world at all, as a lot of companies throughout the world are forcing their employees to work remotely until the new coronavirus passes. This is an efficient way of avoiding infections with COVID-19 as much as possible
Mars 2020 mission could be postponed
A whole world is waiting for NASA to get humans to Mars once and for all, but the 2020 launch could be delayed because of the pandemic. Any delay of this mission means that we have to wait an extra two years for liftoff towards the Red Planet.
Humanity has dreamed for centuries that it will go to Mars one day, but only now it seems that we have the right technology to do it. But first, we have a much bigger urgency: to get rid of COVID-19.
Source: bgr.com
