Neil Armstrong Tribute by Hank Green

A Worthy Cause!

These days when every silly idea can amass huge amounts of money on various kick starter sites, I find myself dumbfounded by the lack of support for those projects that would truly deserve our attention and help. One of these is Uwingu, a new proposal to fund space-related research and educational projects.

Uwingu on Indiegogo

Please check out the above link and consider donating. Your money is going to the right hands to support a worthy cause. But, in case if you are not sure, here is a video explaining the thought and intention behind the project:

Curiosity Has Landed!

Curiosity is on the surface of Mars, looking safe and sound, and it is already sending back pictures! Today is a great day for all humanity!

First pictures:

Get Curious!

Just a quick recommendation for the weekend: if you want to see a beautifully designed and informative website solely dedicated to NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover, check out getcurious.com.

Curiosity on Xbox Live

Ever wondered what it would be like to witness Curiosity’s landing? Well, thanks to the recent cooperation between NASA and Microsoft, you can not only do that now but also control the rover as it descends onto the Red Planet—so to speak. :)

From yesterday morning, the Kinect game “Mars Rover Landing” is available on Xbox Live free of charge. If you own an Xbox with a Kinect sensor, I recommend you go and check it out. The game is fun, looks great, and has quite a bit of educational value, not to mention the potential to get kids excited about science and space exploration!

The cooperation between the space agency and Microsoft, however, does not end with "Mars Rover Landing." The list of real life and online events commemorating Curiosity’s landing—of which I am updating continuously as new information comes out—gained a new entry, as Microsoft will also broadcast the event via Xbox Live!

Curiosity Landing Events

If you are at all interested in space exploration, you know how important early August will be. If you do not know, here is a little recap: on August 6th 5:31 UTC, Mars Science Laboratory—or Curiosity—the most sophisticated piece of technology ever to land on an alien planet, will arrive at Mars and begins its descent.

While landing spacecrafts has always been a risky business, Curiosity’s fiery, four-stage descent, including the much talked about sky crane, is extraordinarily dangerous. Scientists and space enthusiasts all around the world will bite their nails bloody during the rover’s descent, or as they call it, the “seven minutes of terror.” Here is a short video from NASA introducing the unprecedented maneuver:

If you are among the above mentioned “space enthusiasts,” I am happy to announce that there will be plenty of events going on at the time of Curiosity’s arrival, many of which are open to the public. So, if you got some time off on August 5th or 6th—depending on where you live—here are a few opportunities for you; both real life and virtual on the web:

A Far-away Ambassador

While the rest of the space community is talking about China’s successful launch of three astronauts—technically the term is taikonauts, but I hate this word—to their space station, I would like to avert your attention to another historic milestone in space exploration:

Two days ago, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory issued a press release, in which they indicated that Voyager 1, the probe NASA launched in 1977, have reached the edge of interstellar space and began to leave our solar system. At nearly eighteen billion kilometers away from Earth, Voyager entered a region of space where the number of charged particles increased significantly, which made JPL scientists believe that the probe reached the heliosheath, the border of the sun’s protective bubble that marks the end of our solar system. With this historic landmark, the 34-year old spacecraft is the farthest man-made object away from Earth, our true  ambassador  on a one-way trip to the center of the galaxy. And the best part is that Voyager 1 has an estimated fifteen years left of its energy supply, promising us many more years of incredible data from a region of space, of which we have no knowledge. Pretty exciting!

We Stopped Dreaming - Episode II

Did you like the video I posted on March 22, called "We Stopped Dreaming?" Well, it received a second "episode," which I am quite eager to share. This new video also makes use of a speech from Neil deGrasse Tyson, and it is just as touching and thought-provoking as the previous one! If you care even a little about space exploration and/or science in general, make sure you share it!

Elder Sign: Omens Review

Elder Sign: Omens is the digital (iOS, Android, and Mac OS X) adaptation of the similarly named board game from Fantasy Flight Games. In it, a group of investigators attempt to stop the awakening of an Ancient One, a supernatural entity from H. P. Lovecraft’s renowned Cthulhu mythos. Players accomplish their goal by completing adventures in an eerie museum setting, some of which reward players with elder signs, which then can be used to stop the Ancient One from waking. To beat these adventures investigators need to match symbols with the ones they generate randomly. In essence, therefore, Elder Sign: Omens is a bit like Yahtzee or a slot machine, only a lot more complex, mixed with puzzle, role-playing, strategy, and exploration elements.

We Stopped Dreaming

I promised myself I won't post any more space videos here. There are just so many of them, and I don't want my blog to be transformed into a video library. But this one is so powerful that I had to share it (make sure you do too).