The Mars Rover recently hit its 4th anniversary of exploration (in Terrestrial years, not Martian) and to celebrate NASA has released the Mars Rover Game for mobile devices or the desktop. The game is both free and fun, and the game page also gives you some comparisons between the game rover and the real one on the red planet. Also on the page are links to information on the other rovers, Curiosity, Spirit, Opportunity, and the as yet unnamed rover mission of 2020. The robots are not the only ones planned to go there; NASA is working on the Journey to Mars project, shooting for a manned landing in the 2030s.
The Perseid Meteor Shower is already under way, with peak viewing on the 12th and 13th of August. During the peak you can see one or two a minute, although even this far outside of the peak there will be a handful per hour, with the frequency going up steadily the closer we get. Meteor showers are named after the constellation they appear to be coming from, but the Perseids appear to be coming from a large chunk of the sky. Generally speaking if you face the Big Dipper or Plow from late in the evening until just before dawn you should have an excellent show. For more detailed information and instructions see the Meteor Watch web site linked at the start of this article.
Yes, I am going to add an Orbital Report here, and this is my first attempt, embedding it in a page rather than inserting a widget into the sidebar. If I get this part working properly, I will go for the widget. Assuming I can compress it down enough to fit without losing the raw data or the readouts.
Track ISS, everything is default, except the NORAD id:
Track ISS, Hubble, NOAA, small widget (use the drop-down to select the satellite:
Track Funcube, large widget, don’t care if next pass is optically visible or
not:
NASA has assembled the surface of Mars as a Mixed-Reality environment (VR and RL) Called OnSight for scientists all over the world. They are using it not only to explore the Red Planet, but also to design the next set of landers (and other spacecraft) to visit it. Not content to stop there, they will be making it public this summer at the “Destination: Mars” exhibit, which will open at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. I feel an expedition coming on! For a little more insight into OnSight, check out this story at the Upload VR site, and watch their video. Thanks to VR Scout for the original heads up!
If you aren’t an Astronaut, you probably haven’t seen the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis from Space. But luckily there are some serious camera fanatics in orbit these days, here is a glimpse of what they have been up to where the Auroras are concerned. If you pay attention, you will also get to see some far ranging lightning strikes from a gods-eye view, so you can take in how a single strike can hit 50 places across a continent at once. Also, here is the link for the full 4K version at YouTube, or you can go directly to NASA for the best possible quality. Visit the NASA TV Gateway to check what is coming up on each of their channels and link directly in. You need at least 13MBps down to watch 4K TV online even if nothing else is trying to use the internet from your house, but most broadband services these days give you 10 times that or better, on the theory that your whole family will be trying to do things at that resolution at the same time.
10 Years of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter data gathered together: Magnificent Mars is a short but intense video highlighting the last decades worth of images brought back from the red planet. It’s next project may be selecting a landing area for the first manned flight.