scinerds:

sagansense:

We Petition The Obama Administration To:
Repeal The Sequester’s Cuts On NASA’s Spending In Public Outreach And Its STEM Programs

The Sequester’s recent cuts on NASA’s spending in public outreach and its STEM programs must not be allowed. These cuts would end the many programs NASA has for educating the children of our society, as well as many other forms of public outreach held by NASA.

In an internal memo issued on the evening of Friday, March 22, the Administration notes that “effective immediately, all education and public outreach activities should be suspended, pending further review. In terms of scope, this includes all public engagement and outreach events, programs, activities, and products developed and implemented by Headquarters, Mission Directorates, and Centers across the Agency, including all education and public outreach efforts conducted by programs and projects.”

Created: Mar 22, 2013

Signatures needed by April 21, 2013 to reach goal of 100,000

signal boost!

Everyone please go sign this.  It is very import for Nasa to continue its outreach and stem initiatives to get kids interested in science, technology, engineering, and math at an early age.  

unexpectedtech:

Nasa and the European Space Agency have successfully used their experimental interplanetary internet system to control a Lego robot on Earth from the International Space Station.

Sunita Williams, commander of Expedition 33 aboard the ISS, used the Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) protocol to drive a little Lego robot at the European Space Operations Centre in Germany to demonstrate the protocol’s use as a method of controlling technology on a planet’s surface from orbit.

The DTN system is designed to enable standardised communications with distant technologies — deep spacecraft and orbital systems, for example — without being hampered by the associated long distances and time delays.

As such, the Bundle Protocol — analogous to the Internet Protocol used by the terrestrial internet — is able to work around disconnections and errors by moving data in bursts across parts of the network as links become available rather than requiring a continuous connection between the source and destination.

“The demonstration showed the feasibility of using a new communications infrastructure to send commands to a surface robot from an orbiting spacecraft and receive images and data back from the robot,” said Badri Younes, deputy associate administrator for space communications and navigation at Nasa headquarters. “The experimental DTN we’ve tested from the space station may one day be used by humans on a spacecraft in orbit around Mars to operate robots on the surface, or from Earth using orbiting satellites as relay stations.”

robotbearknight:

Last night, I watched a live feed from a command center in Pasadena, California, piped through the Internet 1800 miles to me in St. Louis, Missouri. I heard telemetry and ‘heart-beat’ confirmation tones from a 2.5 billion dollar Mini Cooper sized science lab (the largest ever for a mission) launched 253 days ago, from 353 million miles away, above the surface of another planet. That science lab hit the Martian atmosphere at 13,200 miles per hour. It burned through the atmosphere, and expended a 15 foot diameter heat shield (the largest ever for a mission) that had withstood temperatures of 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit (hot enough to melt every metal you can think of). It rode down on a 51 foot diameter parachute (the largest ever for a mission) designed to withstand speeds of 1450 miles per hour (there was no backup chute). Then the chute was abandoned, and the craft went into free fall for a few seconds. A rocket pack was activated to allow the car sized object to hover over the surface, while a skycrane lowered the entire thing gently to the rocky soil. It landed within a 12 mile by 4 mile ellipse, or around 38 square miles (the size of Barcelona, Spain*), within planetary spitting distance of a 3.5 mile high mountain.

All with zero command input from any human being watching, running on less computing power than the phone in your pocket.


*So take a sheet of paper, fold it in half longways. Now walk about 5,600 miles away. Now hit it with a bullet the width of a strand of DNA (~4 nanometers). That’s what it’s like to land the rover in such a small area from such a long distance.

I know this is a little late to the game but this is the best description of the Curiosity Rover success that I have read.

Curiosity’s shadow on the surface of Mars.

25 more years of Winter.

wvumarsrover:

Here is our midpoint project review video.

This is the midpoint video for my team’s robot for the Nasa/Rascal Robo-Ops Competition.

-Justin

8bitfuture:

Video: Curiosity to make unusual landing on Mars.

Previous Mars Rover missions have landed on the Martian surface using a bubble of balloons to cushion their touchdown. With Curiosity being much heavier and more sensitive, a new technique had to be found to safely land the rover.

itsfullofstars:

NASA and LEGO Partnership Inspires Kids to Pursue Science and Engineering

NASA announced Tuesday the signing of a Space Act Agreement with The LEGO Group to conduct education and public outreach activities aimed at increasing participation in science, technology, engineering and math fields. 

To commemorate the beginning of this partnership, the crew of space shuttle Discovery’s STS-133 mission will carry a small LEGO® shuttle when it launches Wednesday, Nov. 3, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. 

The partnership marks the beginning of a three-year agreement that will use the inspiration of NASA’s space exploration missions and the appeal of the popular LEGO bricks to spur children’s interest in STEM. The theme of the partnership is “Building and Exploring Our Future.” 

The LEGO Group will release four NASA inspired products in their LEGO CITY line next year. The space-themed products will vary in terms of complexity, engaging audiences from young children to adult LEGO fans. Each product release will contain NASA-inspired education materials. 

Keep reading.

spoken-nerd:

itsfullofstars:

Don’t Get Neil deGrasse Tyson Started About the Un-Science-y Politicians Who Are Killing America’s Dreams

As we’ve learned time and time again, when you need to hear someone kvetch hard about the state of science in this country, point your radio telescopes at Hayden Planetarium head Neil deGrasse. In the midst of the debt debacle, he responds to Bill Maher’s question about Washington’s possible assassination of the James Webb Space Telescope with a ranty explanation of how Congress is mortgaging the futuristic dreams Americans used to have. He ends with a good question: How far can science go in Washington when so few Congressmen are scientists?

See the full discussion here, and calm your Tyson-ish nerves with this relaxing Carl Sagan video.

Source: motherboard.tv

*crying internet tears*