Transit of Venus Nerd Family Viewing

Claire had a birthday around the time of the transit of Venus between us and the sun.  I rushed home from work and gathered a bunch of optics and parts.  The old Canon FD lenses couldn't be focused quite right.  Ditto for the old slide projector lenses.  The 12x50 binoculars bungee corded to an old tripod did the trick!

 Thanks to the people that threw up a webpage dedicated to viewing the transit.  The tips came in handy.  Sure, it was a shadow on a projected image but we felt like we had done something wonderful.  Claire had been at a K.U. engineering camp earlier in the day and was happy to be doing some practical science.

I am out on travel at the moment.  This blog is on scheduled post mode.  Please leave a comment if you so choose and I will moderate it when I return.  Thanks!

Opportunity: Hail the Amazing Rover!

NASA's Opportunity rover is now 8 1/2 years (3043 days) into its 92 day mission and still going strong!  It powered up after its fifth Martian winter and is on the move.  It is a little pokey given the amount of dust that is collecting on the solar panels.  Still, we at the House Full of Nerds are impressed at this engineering accomplishment.  This little guy landed on Mars on January 25, 2004.

The twin rover, Spirit, became mired in deep sand and its last communication with Earth was on March 22, 2010.  Opportunity is currently alone on the red planet, but will be joined by the next generation in rover technology in August, 2012.  Curiosity is a substantial mobile laboratory with a nuclear power source.  The landing system is unique and we are hoping for a good start for the mission.

The vista circa May, 2012.  This is the largest crater in the journey and represents the oldest rock strata.  You can see the edge of one of the solar panels in the foreground.  The dust accumulation is reducing power output.

Just to give you an idea what Opportunity has been up against, Mars receives roughly 43% of the amount of sunlight that Earth receives.  With a thin atmosphere, it can't hold heat well.  The high summer temperature ranges up to 23 degree F.   Mars has frequent, large scale dust storms which sometimes cover the entire planet.

Discovery from late 2011:  Gypsum like deposits caused by free water percolating through rock strata.  Opportunity and Spirit both observed evidence of past free water on the surface of Mars.

Self portrait from 2007.  The solar cell still look pretty clean.

Source:  http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer/multimedia/pia15684.html

Video: Eight Years and Counting

Congratulations to Opportunity and the many builders and mission operators of NASA.  The mission is now open ended.  We hope Opportunity keeps producing good science for many days to come.

Opportunity in 2002

The Birthday Blog Post From Space

March, 1964 was a good month.  But I am perhaps a bit biased.

For anyone that has been following this blog, it is no secret that I have a serious love of anything related to space exploration.  It's my birthday and I am going to totally date myself by posting National Geographic images from the month I was born.  I can't think about my birthday without thinking of growing up during the space race.

The excitement of space travel and technology development was the flip side to growing up with the Vietnam War, the Cold War, duck and cover, and its close cousin Mutually Assured Destruction.  I grew up in an era where all of this was shiny and new.  Everything smelled like the future.  Well, except for cars before emission controls.

This has an interesting resemblance to the 1954 kids book version of the the space suit.

 http://vintagetechobsessions.blogspot.com/2012/02/dear-mr-glenn.html

This is something of a hybrid between the Soviet and U.S. approach to landing.  Interesting concept, but probably just as well that was all the idea amounted to.

I am still amazed by rockets.

This was actually at the beginning of the article.  The article contains a detailed foldout of the various pieces of Apollo space craft.  The LEM was pretty well thought out five years before we actually got to the moon.

Coming home.  Really, the whole thing is just amazing.

It's funny that I still think of us getting to the moon in terms of "we" and "us".  Certainly, there is some national pride and I would not have wanted the Soviets to get there first.  But I tend to think of actually getting there as an accomplishment for our species.

As much appeal as I find in human space travel, I am still excited by our collective activities in space exploration.  Four years into the Great Recession, it is hard to comprehend the amount of money it would take to lift people and all the stuff they would require to Mars. From my perspective, we need some really good targets before we take the next steps.

We are doing some incredibly good science between our robotic and remote sensing servants. As of March 19, 2012, we have collectively cataloged 762 extrasolar planets including one water world.  Just this week, we learned that Mercury is a really strange place. NASA Messenger Findings

Although our family mourned the loss of the Mars rover Spirit, Opportunity is beginning its ninth year of its three month mission.  Its much larger cousin, Curiosity, is in route to Mars loaded with a comprehensive laboratory tools.  Curiosity won't be dependent on solar power.  We'll see what lessons have been learned on reliability in design.

Although the NASA shuttle program is no more, the International Space Station has been continuously inhabited for over 12 years and zips by overhead every 90 minutes or so.  The U.S. crew members are licensed amateur radio operators.  Beyond having access to high powered transmitters for remote control quadrotors, talking with the ISS crew is the coolest thing I can do with my new FCC Technician license.

Granted, my kids have a space cheerleader at home and friends bound to be future software, computer and robotics engineers.  Although human space flight is a big deal for them, they are equally excited about everything else going on in space research.  At some point we'll probably try out the crowd sourced SETI Live program. http://www.setilive.org/

For me, space is all about inspiration.  I'm thankful for the pioneering work that has gotten us this far.  I'm also excited for the future of space exploration.  When we decide to go, it will no doubt be to someplace incredibly interesting.  Maybe one of our emissaries will get to say hi to Spirit in person.

http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/whyweexplore/why_we_explore_main.html

 

 More space stuff:
 Amazing kid space ephemera:   http://dreamsofspace.blogspot.com/
If you like toy LEMs, you will love these great examples:
 http://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2012/03/few-good-lems.html

Dear Mr. Glenn,

Thanks for your role in the beginning of America's race for the Moon.

Click Image to Enlarge

 Link-o-rama:

Scientific American Blog:  John Glenn: The Man Behind the Hero
Universal Newsreel:  Universal Newsreel on YouTube
NASA Mercury Archive:  http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/history/mercury/mercury.htm