Let’s talk non-Artemis stuff. So, you may or may not remember but NASA actually does do other things that are kind a cool… like crashing spacecraft into asteroids. That’s right NASA’s DART mission is about to do its thing this month on the 26th . For those of you that may not remember or it’s been a while since you looked into the DART mission here is a quick run down of what DART is going to do. DART is a spacecraft that was specifically designed to test our capabilities at planetary defense when it comes to us not going the way of the dinosaurs. DART is set to impact the asteroid Didymos’s moon Dimorphos on September 26th to see if we can change it’s orbit slightly. If successful this will give us data on how we can use this same technique to deflect an incoming asteroid that could threaten Earth one day. The change to Didymos’s moon will be very small but measurable.
It will be interesting to see the result for all we know we impact the moon and annihilate it, super exciting or it could be boring and nothing happens other than we wasted millions of dollars only to find out we can’t protect ourselves. Let me know what you think in the poll
Article linked below
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/dart-sets-sights-on-asteroid-target
Alright everyone I finally had time to sit down and download all the raw photos from Ingenuities flight #20. I did 4 renders one at 24 frames/sec then 1/2, 1/4 and 1/8 speed. Personally I am torn between the 1/4 and 1/8 being my favorite so I am going to post the 1/8 here and put the others in a folder in the content area. Flight 20 occurred on Feb 25th or SOL 362 of the Perseverance mission
Enjoy!
Just so you know I am super new to this just started doing this earlier this year. For me here in the PNW it has FINALLY stopped raining and its supposed to be clear for today and all hollows eve tomorrow so it’s a recipe for some great Astrophotography! I will attach a time-lapse that I did in early September and if conditions hold out then I will try to get the galaxy center tonight or tomorrow. If it works out I will share with you all. Have a wonderful holiday weekend! In the mean time here is a little something for you.
So, as it turns out apparently Perseverance has an autopilot feature or as NASA calls it Autonav. Now I am not talking about autopilot as in it flew itself to Mars and even landed all on its own (which by the way I could watch that over and over again and it never gets old) it can actually drive and navigate all on its own as well. Just like a sexy tesla you give it a destination and it uses it’s nav cameras and figures out a way to get there. Now granted Perseverance drives slow so it doesn’t need to perform lightning speed calculations in fact I’m pretty sure your old flip phone has sufficient if not more computing power than what is needed for Perseverance’s Autonav.
Fun Fact: This is not the first iteration of Autonav Curiosity actually has an older version of this capability (something I never knew) however Perseverance’s version allows it to drive about 5 times faster. Whatever 5 x Slow =
...
One of the coolest things I think NASA has done to date was to stick microphones on Perseverance. I want to buy the scientists a beer that had the wherewithal to go "You know what wonder what shit sounds like on Mars". Well as it turns out Mr. Scientists surprisingly enough not how you would think. Now in some cases it does sound "normal" but Ingenuity didn't sound anything like I thought it would and I'm a drone pilot! Now NASA has altered this audio to enhance the sound over the wind and stuff, however you are going to have to listed twice because what you think is background noise is actually Ingenuity but you don't know that until it winds down at the end.
Have a listen!
Starship Launch has been Delayed until Saturday. Will have the feeds up when they are available.
Ok I know it has been about a year and a lot has happened. But hey Starship launching?? Looks like it could be this Friday... If so I will have all the streams I can find up here and listed so you can check them out.
Enjoy!
