Really Rocket Science - Cool Stuff

DIY Friday: iPhone 4 Antenna Fix

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 07:00:19 -0700

Holding the new iPhone 4 can cause interference between the GSM and WiFi antennae, so naturally the Net is abuzz with this "problem." Hey, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this one out.

Brilliant Scotchtape solution from Kit Eaton, and costs almost nothing, via Fast Company...

Get about an inch of scotch tape off the reel (that's Sellotape if you're in the U.K.).

Cut it carefully so that you make a rectangle something over a half-inch long and just tall enough to exceed the iPhone 4's height (about 0.4 inches should do it).

Align the piece of tape so that it's covering a section of the lower left metal side of the iPhone 4, some below the thin black plastic line and some above.

Stick it around the phone's metal edge, making sure that all of the back of the edge's metal strip is covered--you may even be able to leave the front uncovered, as it's the back where your hand will rest. The main thing is to ensure that it's unlikely that your palm will touch the metal on both sides of the black plastic line.

Result: Your iPhone 4's twin antennas are now insulated against skin short-circuiting in the "problem corner". You don't even have to use scotch tape--make a statement and do it in bright red electrician's tape, if you feel better for it.

It's about time the geniuses at 3M got some attention.

Oh, and the new iPhone? It's lovely; held one yesterday.

Hayabusa's Hot Today

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 06:00:36 -0700

Beautiful video footage, courtesy of NASA, of Hayabusa's re-entry after a 7-year mission and 6 billion kilometers.

Officially...

　日本時間6月13日19時51分に「はやぶさ」は無事カプセルを分離し、日本時間6月13日22時51分頃には大気圏に突入しました。
　2003年5月9日にM-Vロケットで打ち上げられてから約7年間、イトカワに着陸し、サンプル採取作業を行い、再び地球に帰還するという難事業を、幾多の困難を乗り越え成し遂げることができました。
　これまで応援していただいた皆様に感謝いたします。

　引き続き、豪州において地球に帰還したカプセルの回収作業を進めてまいります

In other words, via JAXA...

Hayabusa separated the capsule at 7:51 p.m. and reentered the atmosphere at 10:51 p.m. on June 13th, 2010 (JST).
Hayabusa was launched on May 9th, 2003 by M-V rocket and operated for approximately seven years. During its operation, JAXA was able to achieve the difficult mission including Hayabusa's sample capture attempt after its touchdown on the asteroid named Itokawa, and Hayabusa’s return to the earth overcoming many hardships. JAXA would like to appreciate every support to JAXA leading this mission to a great success.
The Hayabusa capsule has just returned to Woomera, Australia. As the next step, JAXA will move forward to the capsule recovery.

So what did it look like on the ground? Somebody from Wakayama University Institute for Education on Space was pretty excited to capture it on video, on the ground in Australia...

Technorati Tags: jaxa nasa hayabusa muses-c asteroid+sample woomera reentry hayabusa+reentry

IKAROS Solar Sail

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 10:29:34 -0700

Watch the IKAROS solar sail deploy on this JAXA blog.

Technorati Tags: ikaros jaxa solar+sail

VASIMR: Hammer-down in Space

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 09:26:43 -0700

Very cool technology being developed by Ad Astra Rocket Company: using plasma engines to reach Mars in 39 days. Hammer-down: space truckin at 110,000 MPH.

Excellent piece in SpaceflightNow.com on the VASIMR engine...

The company's main project is the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket, or VASIMR, a highly-efficient space engine running on electricity and argon gas instead of conventional solid or liquid propellants.

Franklin Chang-Diaz, the project's chief architect, says the VASIMR engine is the most flight-ready high-power electric propulsion system anywhere in the world.

"It is transformational technology that we are developing," Chang-Diaz said. "It always has been my view that chemical approach to space transportation really was not going to get us very far."

Chemical rocket engines require spacecraft to carry all of its propellant during its mission. The VASIMR engine burns small amounts of argon gas, one of the most stable elements on the periodic table. But one of the most revolutionary features of the VASIMR design is its reliance on electricity, a renewable resource in space.

"It's very robust, but in order to get beyond the moon, and move on to Mars and beyond, we really need completely new transportation technology," Chang-Diaz said. "We view the VASIMR as the workhorse for that transportation infrastructure."

Electrically-powered plasma rockets could cut travel times for missions across the solar system. One concept championed by Chang-Diaz involves a 39-day mission to Mars, but it assumes leaps in nuclear energy production in space.

Yeah, it works alright. Watch this engine test...

Here's a video clip about the company...

And a simulation of the trip to Mars...

Technorati Tags: vasimr plasma helicon+physics

Dancing With The Satellites

Tue, 25 May 2010 08:02:22 -0700

Typically well-done rendering by AGI of how SES and Intelsat plan to mitigate interference between Galaxy-15 and AMC-11.

Technorati Tags: amc-11 galaxy-15 ses-1 zombiesat ses intelsat

DIY Friday: MakerFaire 2010

Fri, 21 May 2010 06:46:50 -0700

This weekend, at the San Mateo County Event Center, it's Maker Faire 2010, the world's largest DIY festival. A brilliant idea from the publishers of Make: -- one of the very few successful new media properties in the new millennium.

Just check out this preview for what to expect.

The big fun event ought to be the EepyBird.com guys, originators of the Diet Coke/Mentos phenomenon a few years back.

They've refined their "science entertainment" to produce Bellagio-style fountain art. Check out these videos...

Can't make it out to California? Maker Faire is coming to Michigan (Detroit and Ann Arbor) and New York.

Technorati Tags: diy makezine maker+faire eepybird

Tweets From Space

Tue, 11 May 2010 06:24:23 -0700

The University of Tokyo's Intelligent Space Systems Laboratory (Nakasuka) built and launched a cubesat, 4-in/10-cm square, in 2005. The low-earth orbit spacecraft is now sending out updates via Twitter, all by itself.

The tweets, in Japanese, even feature little twitpics and have assembled over 2,600 followers. Some detail, via Asiajin:

Nakasuga Lab., the University of Tokyo, introduced a bot account tweeting the real-time state of a satellite which is located in the earth low orbit. The tweet(@XI-V) keeps us update with parameters like the satellite’s surface temperature, battery voltage and where it is located over of the planet and also shows us still images shooting the planet from the satellite in the space.

As we've blogged before, real-time tweets from space has had human intervention. This is automatic, and that's kinda cool. This information is more than the poor boys at Intelsat have regarding the Galaxy-15 spacecraft. They get no telemetry data at all, but they do have some ranging info and ephemeris data.

As for CubeSat XI-V, a job well done by the rocket scientists at Nakasuka!

Technorati Tags: nakasuka cubesat+xi-v tokyo issl cubesat+tweets twitter low+earth+orbit

DIY Friday: Chumby 3G Router

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 14:14:10 -0700

Bunnie's blog has the coolest 3G router you can make yourself with a Chumby...

There's an Easter Egg inside the chumby One (which is now on sale at Costco online for $99, cheaper than chumby.com's $119 price!) that enables it to work with certain 3G USB modems and function as a 3G router (similar to a MiFi). Use of the Easter Egg is documented on the chumby wiki, but it can be quite simple:

Plug in your 3G card.

Go to the Network Config screen by pressing the top button, going to Settings, then tapping on Network.

Select "create a new connection", press OK, and wait for the scan to time out.

Select "Other"

Enter 3G as the name of the access point. It must have a capital G for it to work.

Wait for the subsequent scan to time out.

Select "Manual".

Tap "OK" to select None as the encryption type.

Tap "OK" to select Automatic IP allocation.

Tap "OK" to confirm settings and connect to the network

To activate local wifi sharing, ssh into the device (or plug in a USB keyboard to activate the drop-down console) and use the command "touch /psp/start_ap" to flag the network setup scripts to configure your chumby One as an access point. Note that AP mode also works with other network sources, such as Ethernet-over-USB.

Cute.

Technorati Tags: internet+radio mifi wifi diy+friday diy chumber

DIY Friday: Rube Goldberg Machine

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 06:36:17 -0700

The "This Too Shall Pass" music video by the band OK Go is impressive. It features a Rube Goldberg Machine produced with the help of MIT students and alumni, it was put up on YouTube in March and has since garnered more than 11 million views. Sure, that's nowhere near the new record set by Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" video (187 million and counting). Posting music videos helps sell records. EMI had a problem with that, so OK Go is on its now. Good for them.

OK Go's Web site has a wonderful interactive floor map to keep you busy.

Very cool. Watch this video of how to build one with kids. Check out Argonne National Laboratory's contest for high schools, and, of course, Purdue's Rube Goldberg Contest is one of the best for college students.

Need ideas? Poke around the Instructables site.

Technorati Tags: rube+goldberg diy diy+friday ok+go emi

Fun With The Sun

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 06:16:54 -0700

Yes, it's Earth Day. So we'll follow the Sun instead. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory released it's first images and video. The spacecraft's three instruments will likely revolutionize the study of heliophysics, much as Hubble did for astronomy.

The Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) will study the motions and magnetic fields at the Sun's surface to figure out what's happening inside.

The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) is a bunch of four telescopes will check out the corona, the outer layer of the Sun's atmosphere. The AIA filters will observe across ten wavelength and provide 725 km resolution.

And the Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment (EVE) will gauge the Sun's energy in extreme-ultraviolet wavelengths.

Check out this short video...

Technorati Tags: solar heliophysics sun sdo nasa cme

DIY Friday: R2-D2 Lamp

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 09:22:36 -0700

This is a cool project for Star Wars fans: a metal desk lamp decorated to look like R2-D 2, via Instructables...

I am building a full size R2D2 from scratch, when you are scratch building everything begins look like a potential part, well this lamp I just got from IKEA really reminded me of the little domed one so I got bored and with a little bit of tweaking I got him looking pretty good.

Can't make the decals yourself? Buy them on Etsy! Kids love R2-D2.

Technorati Tags: r2-d2 star+wars instructables ikea

Eyjafjallajoekull Eruption

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 06:59:25 -0700

How did the volcanic eruption in Iceland get to ground air traffic in northern Europe? Check out this illustration from the ESA...

The information has been derived by a model using SO2 as particle tracer for the ash plume. This model has been developed at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research in the Department of Atmospheric and Climate Research.
This service was developed within the ESA Data User Element 'Support to Aviation for Volcanic Ash Avoidance' with the aim of generating accurate and timely satellite-based information to Volcanic Ash Advisory Centres (VAACs) to assist the aviation community.

Technorati Tags: Eyjafjallajoekull iceland volcano plume

STS-131 Launched

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 09:00:34 -0700

Nice launch this morning, and SpaceflightNow.com's photo selections (by Stephen Clark) are beautiful.

I know NASA was happy about it...

During a postlaunch news conference at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the 6:21 a.m. EDT liftoff of space shuttle Discovery was hailed as a great success.

Calling the launch, "a great start to a great mission," Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Space Operations, said the successful liftoff was a tribute to the team at Kennedy that got the vehicle ready to fly.

Mike Moses, chair of the Mission Management Team, said it was, "a spectacular launch and picture-perfect countdown." He outlined a few minor technical issues that were recorded, but that the spacecraft and crew were ready to start an action-packed mission.

Expressing his happiness that they were able to launch on the first attempt, Pete Nickolenko, STS-131 launch director, said he was proud of the teams that make such a difficult job look so easy.
Also on hand was Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency President Keiji Tachikawa, who noted that this will be the first time two Japanese astronauts will be in space at the same time, as Discovery's Mission Specialist Naoko Yamazaki joins Expedition 23 crew member Soichi Noguchi for the STS-131 mission.

Discovery and crew will spend 13 days in space on their mission to the International Space Station.

Cool video, as always...

Technorati Tags: sts-131 nasa space+shuttle discovery+launch

DIY Friday: Steampunk Satellite Dish

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 06:09:36 -0700

We've done featured quite a few DIY projects that recycle or re-use old satellite antennas. From using an old Primestar reflector to improve WiFi, to the wireless Internet cantenna, to more physical structures such as this BUD gazebo and the ever-popular solar cooker. Not mention one for the birds.

Today, you're on your own with the steampunk satellite dish. We're inspired by work commissioned by Telstra in Australia and created by Martin Dolan and the mArty Gallery, near Melbourne.

Look around your shop for old pipe and things parabolic, and have at it!

Australia. Steampunk. I'm thinking Mad Max, aren't you?

Technorati Tags: steampunk telstra diy+friday diy satellite+dish recycle reuse mad+max

Sugarloaf Science

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 08:17:56 -0700

Time for a little vacation -- in Sugarloaf, Maine.

The weather may seem discouraging, but there's no substitute for being here. Rain mixed with snow and sleet. The mountain's completely open, with 130+ trails.

I like their Web cam...

Technorati Tags: sugarloaf goes-12 maine el+nino