Intergalactic planetary….tweets

Well, not quite intergalactic, but from Mars….and that’s pretty damn cool. It’s been a while any of the space missions have captured my imagination, only this morning I was reading about the “Jules Vern” spacecraft that’s essentially a posh rubbish bin that the astronauts on the International Space Station pile their rubbish into before aiming it at the atmosphere where it’s obliterated by the heat. Alright, I think I’ve mad it sound cooler that it is….cos it’s just a big bin, sorry Esa. 

On the other hand, The Mars Phoenix Lander is a far more interesting tale and one that we can follow practically minute by minute because the thing (or some engineer) is tweeting its journey so that us mere Earthlings can follow.  One of the latest tweets reads “News of my demise is premature but I appreciate the warm thoughts :-) I plan to last many more weeks before ice & darkness win”, The Mars Phoenix Lander also informed us “Solar panels generate about 2000 watt-hours of energy per sol (down from 3500 in June). So plan is to dig many samples now & then analyze”.   

MyTake – What an awesome use of twitter and totally cost-effective – hardly used any taxpayer money. Space missions just don’t get the coverage they used to and this is a very innovative way of allowing people to follow it using a medium that could have been made for it – hey NASA, you didn’t invent Twitter did you? I wonder if CERN are on twitter….. you could just imagine the tweets: ”smashed another proton…..I rock”. 

Let it be.....heard in space

When the Beatles wrote Across the Universe, I wonder if they thought that someday, someone would take that literarily. To mark NASA's 50th anniversary, the Beatles classic, Across the Universe, will be the first song ever to be directly beamed into space. The song will be beamed out via the Deep Space Network and will be aimed at the North Star, Polaris - 431 light-years from Earth. Sir Paul gave the project two thumbs up sending the following message to the boys at NASA: "Well done, Nasa," he added. "Send my love to the aliens. All the best, Paul."

My Take - I don't think we're going to see any major scientific breakthroughs here, but hey, it's a pretty cool thing to do. And who knows, maybe the Deep Space Network will become the universe's first social network - we share Beatles music and someone sends us back the secret of immortality.

The mother of all space games

Want to work at NASA - better get gaming then. The agency that put man on the moon is considering having a massively multiplayer online game developed to inspire the next generation of NASA employees. The game would be aimed at students and would include "real NASA engineering and science missions".

NASA has put out a Request For Information, giving interested developers the Chance to get involved with the project that NASA believes will help find the next generation of scientists and engineers needed to fulfil its "vision for space exploration".