You know today I had a funny little thought and I said to myself I wonder what ever happened to that little asteroid mining company out of Bellevue Wa called Planetary Resources. I realized that I had not heard anything about them in some time I knew they had a couple cube satellites out there but not much more than that. So I did a little digging and it turns out they were acquired back in 2018 by a blockchain company called ConsenSys. Why a blockchain company wants a space company that mines asteroids is beyond me the statement given leads me to believe they were interested in only their assets and not their mission (sad really). Some more poking around and it really does look like they are gone for good and even though the domain name is registered and you do hit a web server there is no landing page for them. RIP Planetary Resources… Anyone want to start an asteroid mining company?
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 =
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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!
