Every rock tells a story of past volcanic eruptions, meteoric impacts, and giant earthquakes. What we learn on Earth can also be applied to other planets. It involves what's called terrestrial analogs.

"I personally work on the Curiosity and Perseverance Mars Rovers," said physical scientist Ryan Anderson, who is with the U.S. Geological Survey Astrogeology Science Center. "I'm involved with the laser instruments that are on top of their heads. They zap rocks with the laser and tell us what they're made of."

Analogs are places on Earth with geological, biological, or environmental conditions similar to those found on other planets. Anderson says there are many terrestrial analogs in northern Arizona, including Sunset Crater.

"It's useful to have these analogs because we can't send people to everywhere we want to study in the solar system," Anderson said. "You know, we've been to the moon, but just a couple of places. It's really hard to get there and the moon is the closest thing."

The USGS Astrogeology Science Center launched a program this year that will put extra attention toward studying the similarities and differences between analogs and sites on other planets.

USGS Geologist Amber Gullikson, an expert in analogs, says they were first used as training grounds for the Apollo missions in the 1960s. Now, they're being used again so future astronauts can map out best practices and make space missions as efficient as possible.

"To understand, you know, the length of a traverse, how long it takes to get there, to test out the various instruments that you're going to use in order to collect samples," Gullikson said. "Also, how long it will take to collect those samples."

"We're really in the business of maximizing the science return from NASA's missions," Anderson said. "And now we're coming full circle because NASA's planning to go back to the moon again, and we're right there with them, helping them train and practice and get ready to go again."

Most adults in the United States agree that the worst of the coronavirus pandemic has passed, but they're divided over concerns and expectations for what's next, according to a survey published Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

At this stage of the pandemic, opinions on masking and other restrictions aimed to minimize the spread are mixed — with a split largely down party lines.

Overall in the U.S., more than 60% of adults say they are concerned about the consequences of lifting restrictions and keeping them in place. But Democrats are far more likely to say they are concerned about the negative effects of lifting restrictions, while Republicans were more likely to be concerned about the negative effects of keeping restrictions in place.

More than 80% of Democrats said they were at least "somewhat" worried that immunocompromised people will be left behind if the government lifts masking restrictions, compared with 30% of Republicans. Democrats were also about three times more likely than Republicans to say that lifting restrictions could lead to more deaths in their community or cause hospitals to become overwhelmed.

About three-quarters of Republicans, meanwhile, said they worry that local businesses would suffer due to loss of revenue, compared with 50% of Democrats.

A majority of both Democrats (56%) and Republicans (73%) said they are worried that the mental health of kids and teenagers will suffer if restrictions are kept in place.

Red and blue states alike have started to lift mask mandates and roll back other pandemic-related restrictions such as vaccination requirements.

But on Friday — just a few days after KFF completed its latest survey — the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shifted the metrics used to drive local masking guidance, dropping the recommendation to mask indoors from 99% of people in the U.S. to less than 30%.

The new CDC recommendations also apply to schools.

Support for masks in schools has fallen since the start of the school year, and parents are now split on the issue, according to the KFF survey.

In September, more than 60% of parents favored some level of masking requirements in school. Now, 43% say masks should be required for all students and staff, 46% say there should be no requirement at all, and 9% say masks should be required only for the unvaccinated in schools.

The partisan divide is clear, with two-thirds of Democrats in support of universal masking requirements in schools and more than three-quarters of Republicans in favor of removing mask requirements completely in schools.

And as masking guidance shifts, vaccinations stagnate.

The KFF survey was fielded right as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration postponed making a decision on whether to authorize a Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for emergency use among children ages 6 months through 4 years.

Nearly 40% of parents of children younger than 5 said that communication from federal health agencies about vaccines for this age group has been confusing. Most say they don't have enough information about their safety and effectiveness, and more than two-thirds say they are not confident that COVID-19 vaccines are safe for young children.

Only about 1 in 5 parents of children younger than 5 says they plan to get their child vaccinated right away once they are eligible, according to the KFF survey.

About a third of children ages 5 to 11 are already vaccinated. But parents of another third of kids in this age group say that they will "definitely not" get their child vaccinated.

On Monday, new data from the New York State Department of Health showed that vaccine effectiveness waned quickly during the omicron surge, especially among children ages 5 to 11, but was still protective against severe disease.

The authors of the preprint study concluded that if other studies repeat these findings, the vaccine dose for younger children may need to be reviewed. The authors also said the data may demonstrate a need to continue "layered protections, including mask-wearing, to prevent infection and transmission" in younger children.

The KFF survey found that vaccination rates are higher for older children, with about 57% of children ages 12 to 17 vaccinated. But parents of another 30% say they will "definitely not" get their adolescent vaccinated.

Overall, vaccination rates among adults have remained largely unchanged, with only about half receiving a booster shot.

Yet more than a third of adults say it's safe to return to pre-pandemic activities.

This is especially true among Republicans (65%) and unvaccinated adults (60%), but it's far less common among Democrats (11%) and vaccinated adults (26%). Only a quarter of adults say it will be at least another year before it will be safe to return to normal.

The vast majority of those surveyed said "normal" life will be different going forward, including continued mask-wearing, continued precautions, changes to the way we work and social distancing.

MORTON GROVE, IL — High-tech contactless shopping is now a reality in more places.

Amazon, which is pushing deeper into the grocery store business, has eliminated check-out lines with a handful of stores offering the cashier-less experience. The stores don't even require you to scan your items as you select them off the shelf, a model that could become the future of all smart shopping.

With a quick QR code scan, you’re checked in.

“A lot of the feedback we get is I feel like, 'I'm shoplifting. I'm stealing,'” said Carl Andersen, a store manager at Amazon Fresh in Morton Grove, Illinois.

The company had already used "Amazon Dash Carts" to record purchases. But this is different.

Look up at the ceiling and you’ll see a trellis of cameras. Numbering in the hundreds, they are covering every square inch of the store.

“The cameras pick up what item was placed and scanned and given to you,” explained Andersen.

Coupled with computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning, the technology automatically detects when products are taken from or returned to the shelves.

Whatever you leave with is charged to your credit card that is linked to your Amazon account when you scan out.

“You don't walk out of with a receipt directly, but you'll get a receipt within just a few hours of leaving the store,” said Andersen.

Instead of paper cards, produce prices are centrally updated and displayed electronically on mini-screens similar to a Kindle reader.

“They'll display the item itself, how much it is, if it's on sale and it also has a star rating on there just to show you, ‘Hey, this item has been reviewed 20,000 times on Amazon,” said Andersen.

There are a handful of Alexa stations where you can find out anything you need to know about where things are, recipe suggestions or what’s on sale that week.

Since September of 2020, the tech giant has opened 23 specialty Amazon Fresh grocery locations around the country. A half dozen stores are now using the “Just Walk Out technology” in California, Illinois, Washington state and Washington, D.C.

And it’s looking like this could be the future of in-store shopping.

One study found that the value of transactions processed by smart checkout technologies will reach $387 billion in 2025.

There are still employees in the store, stocking shelves, making fresh sushi, and preparing home deliveries. Cashiers are on hand in case you’re unnerved by all the cameras and want to shop without being tracked.

“We'll have the people that are a little nervous at the beginning to use it,” said Andersen. “So, the first time they come in, they might want to choose to do traditional shopping, or they might want to talk to the cashiers as they're walking out of the door.”

But the company says it encourages shoppers to use the technology, so they don’t have to wait in line or ever open their wallets.

“There's no line. There's no wait,” said Andersen. “You're truly just getting a quick shopping experience and you can make it as long or as quick as you want.”

Driven in part by the pandemic, the automated technology is already making its way to other retailers. Amazon says the “Just Walk Out technology” is now being used in retail, hospitality, and stadium settings with more to come.

From empty store shelves to people visiting their elderly family members through glass windows, we are living history. Now, librarians are looking to document it.

“I think the pandemic affects all of us, but how people are experiencing that really varies so much from region to region, town to town, state to state," said Anna Neatrour, Digital Initiatives Librarian with the University of Utah.

Neatrour’s colleague, Jeremy Myntti, Head of Digital Library Services, says this an unprecedented time for most of us, but some have lived through similar experiences.

“If you think back to World War II or even during the 1918 flu pandemic, what people were going through is pretty similar to what we're going through now."

Over the last two months, the University of Utah has collected mostly photographs but also letters and oral history videos, documenting how the coronavirus pandemic affected us all in 2020. Many of the early submissions included photos of empty grocery store shelves and people social distancing in each other's front yards.

"People try to visit their elderly family members and in adult care facilities and not being able to do that and having to visit them through windows," said Rachel Wittmann, Digital Curation Librarian.

History students at the University of Utah are also helping the librarians document this time. More than 600 items have already been collected.

"So, once we have items submitted to us, they’re processed, they’re put into an online digital collection where anyone in the world can access to them," said Myntti.

University of Utah isn't the only one working to preserve this historical perspective. Boone County Public Library in Kentucky is also working with the public to collect items and they got the idea from another neighboring library.

In Canada, mother Natalie Long created a

free downloadable time capsule

to help children document their time in quarantine during the coronavirus. The PDF has been shared and download thousands of times, hoping to help children understand and get through this unprecedented time.

As for how long University of Utah will keep documenting, they say it could be years.

"As we move from being more locked down to opened up, things are going to shift and change. So, I think as long as everyone’s lives are disrupted, we want to still keep collecting materials and then we can document each phase of what’s happening to everyone," said Neatrour.

They’ll give future generations a digital look into what life was like in 2020.