time to come up for air

It's time to come up for air. Let's see what else has been going on....

Space
The word is MGS (Mars Global Surveyor) has fallen silent. It's sad to see it go, but it has served us well and far exceeded expectations for the last 10 years. Thinking back to the time when it was launched (1996), we were recovering from the loss of Mars Observer (1992) and restarting the planetary exploration of our solar system (before Magellan (1989), it was Pioneer Venus (1978)). And you have to go back to the days of Viking (1975) to find the last mission to Mars. So what happened between 1978 and 1989? The Space Shuttle. Now with the retiring of the Shuttle fleet and the development of the replacement underway, I hope planetary exploration won't suffer again like in the 80s.

Now back to MGS and Mars. MGS was there for the popular Mars Pathfinder mission (1996), all the way up to the arrival of MRO (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter). In between there were highs and lows. Who can forget the twin disappointments in 98/99 of MCO (Mars Climate Orbiter) and MPL (Mars Polar Lander). Those losses led to the cancellation of the 2001 lander, though the 2001 orbiter, Mars Odyssey, was given the go ahead and functioned as a relay for the hugely successful Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) in 2003. Today, Mars is a crowded place. Even after this apparent end of MGS, we still have Odyssey, Mars Express (of the ESA), and MRO in orbit, and both rovers on the ground. On top of that, Phoenix (the resurrected 2001 lander), is slated to launch next August and the big rover MSL (Mars Science Laboratory) is planned for 2009. Mars sure is getting a lot of attention, and I think a bit too much attention. Each of the other planets in our solar system has at most one dedicated US mission since 1989. MESSENGER is on its way to orbit Mercury in 2011. Magellan ended its mission at Venus in 1994. Galileo ended its mission at Jupiter in 2003. Cassini has been in orbit around Saturn since 2004. And if you're in the Pluto is a planet camp, New Horizons is on its way to flyby Pluto in 2015. Uranus (1986) and Neptune (1989) had just one mission between them (Voyager 2). I think we should expand our horizons and not focus so much on Mars. Each planet is interesting in its own way.

What else?

• The second flight of Delta 4-Heavy on 2007.01.31 .
• Rosetta's flyby of Mars on 2007.02.25 on its way to a comet.
• New Horizons' flyby of Jupiter on 2007.02.28 on its way to Pluto.

Old PC news?

• Quad core CPUs from Intel. As if dual core isn't enough....
• GeForce 8800 from NVIDIA. Another dual slot solution, eech.
• AMD buy out of ATI. Hopefully this won't reduce our video card choices.
• USB missile launcher from kleargear. Too bad the cubicle walls may be a bit too high for these launchers.

RIP
Planet Pluto
1930 - 2006

IAU 2006 General Assembly: Result of the IAU Resolution votes
Pluto Demoted

IAU proposal: Pluto is a planet...

... and so are Ceres, Charon, and 2003 UB313... More to come later...

IAU links:
IAU press release
Q & A

Of Europa, Titan, Enceladus, and Delta IV Heavy

Europa, Titan, and Enceladus are all interesting in their own way. Europa, a moon of Jupiter, may have a sub surface ocean of liquid water. Liquid water is essential for life on earth, so there is possibility of life on Europa. See also Europa Revealed. Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, has a thick hazy nitrogen atmosphere that is unique among all satellites. What we see now on Titan is similar to the conditions on Earth eons and eons ago. See also Titan. More recently, water vapor has been discovered emerging from the south pole of Enceladus, another moon of Saturn. That means this moon may have reservoirs of liquid water.

Why is Europa the priority? I'd say it's because

1. it's closer,
2. we currently don't have any spacecraft at Jupiter, while we still have Cassini at Saturn, and
3. we're ready to go to Europa, while we still have much to scout out at Titan and Enceladus using Cassini before we can plan more focused missions to those places.

Just noticed a new document at the OPAG website.

After some digging a few weeks back, I finally found out about the next flight for the Delta IV Heavy. It'll be in late January of 2007 from Cape Canaveral. That will be the second flight of the Delta IV Heavy and the first after a propellant cavitation problem was found on the maiden flight of the Delta IV Heavy in December 2004. They've applied the fix to the Delta IV line of rockets and let's hope next January's launch of the Delta IV Heavy will be a complete success.

Now back to Europa. Remember ESA's plan to Europa in my last post? What I'm thinking is to have NASA fly the Europa Orbiter while ESA fly the relay craft at Jupiter orbit. This way, we can save some weight on the communications system on the Europa Orbiter and maybe use it for science instruments.

some tidbits on the May 2006 OPAG meeting: Europa

source: Emily's reports on the OPAG meeting
here and here

First up, the on again, off again Europa Orbiter mission. This mission has been talked about for years. Back in the 1990s, it was part of the "Fire and Ice" missions which included a Solar Probe and what eventually morphed into New Horizons. More recently, it was part of JIMO (Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter). But none of those Europa missions got off the ground. I'm glad to hear that Europa is still the consensus priority target in this day where Titan and Enceladus are looking more and more interesting. Maybe we'll finally get an Europa Orbiter this time.

The JPL EGE (Europa Geophysical Explorer) was talked about at this OPAG meeting. It'll use existing technology and is planned to be launched on a Delta IV Heavy. The Delta IV Heavy, if you haven't seen it before, is a sight to behold. It's bigger and more powerful than the Atlas V that launched New Horizons to Pluto this past January. Even with that monster of a launch vehicle, the EGE still needs a VEGA (Venus-Earth gravity assist) trajectory to get to Jupiter and Europa. It's really not easy to do outer planets missions. A good news that came out of this presentation is that they now seem to have a better handle of the problem regarding unstable orbits around Europa, so they can stay in Europa orbit longer.

The ESA (European Space Agency) is also looking at going to Europa. What's different about their plan is that there are 2 orbiters: an Europa orbiter and a Jupiter orbiter that works as a relay. They are looking at using SEP (solar electric propulsion) or the usual chemical thrusters. Very interesting indeed.

There are still other OPAG tidbits to post about, but they'll have to wait for another time. Even though it rained all the way home tonight, the lightning show along with Don Henley and Def Leppard on the radio made it an enjoyable drive home.

Some links on Europa:
Europa
Icepick: the Europa Ocean Explorer

Incoming! It's Nix and Hydra!

Pluto's two new moons now have names: Nix and Hydra.

Read more at Emily's blog and ScienceNOW.

Puzzles 1 and 2 closed with answers

Puzzles 1 and 2 are now closed. The answers have been posted.

Canes win the Cup!

name that Blokus piece

If you were to name this Blokus piece:what would you call it?

The "f"? The "r"? Something else? What is it?

old puzzles to close; new puzzles open

Old puzzles will close on Monday, 6/19:
Puzzle 1
Puzzle 2

New Puzzle 3:
Using the rule from Puzzle 1, what can the L5 (L-pentomino) transform into?

New Puzzle 4:
Using the rule from Puzzle 2, what can the L5 (L-pentomino) transform into?

Never a dull moment

The remnants of this season's first tropical storm came through earlier today. One word sums up the morning drive to work: rain, rain, and more heavy rain. Unlike yesterday, no accident tied up traffic on the way to work.

The highlight of the day goes to the two power outages around lunch time. They were long enough where the UPSes for our workstations gave out (UPSes typically last several minutes; mine lasted under a minute), and IT started shutting down the servers. Most of us developers have laptops, so we were able to run on batteries for a while. But with the servers going offline there was little we could do, so some headed home and some took a long lunch.

The word was the power grid we're on went out. Since the grid is out, nearby traffic lights probably are out too, and restaurants can't operate either. The rain was still pouring so I stayed in working on my laptop.

Around noon, the power came back, and I went out to get a sandwich. Soon after I sat down to eat and turned on my computer, the power went out again. Nice timing guys.

The power soon came back again, but IT had decided to keep most servers offline until tomorrow morning because of the power instability. Who'd thought we'd get two atypical days in a row.

Several streets were flooded around the area, and a local mall had to close because of high water in the parking lot. At least my car got a good cleaning.

These Are (the) Days

What's this? Break lights at the Durham Freeway interchange? It turns out that a tractor-trailer overturned about 6 miles ahead on Interstate 40, two of the four lanes are blocked. Oh joy, I can forget about getting to work on time.

Soon, I find myself in the middle of this parking lot on I-40. Traffic reports on the radio says the alternate route is packed. So I thought, might as well stay on 40 and have a look-see of this tractor-trailer, maybe I'll learn something.

More than 2 hours later, we finally crawled to the source of this mess, but they've already got it cleaned up so there's not much to see. Oh well. Little did I know this is just the beginning of an atypical day.

Not long after I turned on the computer, I realized that the cleaning crew has done it again: "cleaned" the computer monitor. "You call this clean?" I grumbled. It's now got streaks all over the screen, a lot dirtier than before this so-called "cleaning". I clean the monitor screen myself as needed, so I think it's time to put up a sign telling the crew not to clean this monitor.

I then find out that the Yahoo email system was infected by the "Yamanner" worm, and former Duke basketball star Redick was arrested for DWI. These are not the news you expect to hear on this already atypical day.

Still, in the grand scheme of things, most of this is just minor inconvenience. I put on the headphones for some music (it's Evanescence and Enya today) to block out the construction noise from next door, and soon, all those inconveniences were forgotten. These are (the) days.

"These are the days you might fill with laughter until you break."
- 10,000 Maniacs

Blokus variations we play

Here are some Blokus variations we've come up with and played:

"crayola" - At the beginning of the game, each player gives each of the three opponents two of his/her own pieces. Each player decides which two pieces and to whom to give. For a turn, the player can play any piece in front of him/her, which means it can be any of the four colors. The rule is that a piece has to be played off of another piece of the same color. The game is otherwise the same.

"inside out" - This variation starts the game at the center of the board, instead of the corners.

"random" - At the beginning of the game, each player puts three of his/her own pieces in a pool, and one player will then take all the pieces, shake them up, and drop them on the board all at once. The pieces are then adjusted to the nearest squares on the board. The goal of the game is to connect your three pieces, and also to play all your pieces.

"treasure" - At the beginning of the game, each player uses three of his/her own pieces to form an empty space that is the shape of a pentomino (a Blokus piece with five squares). The three pieces that form the "treasure" can only touch at the corners. The goal of the game is to get to as many treasures as you can, and also to play all your pieces.

"turf war" - This variation relaxes the start at corners rule. Each player only has to start within his/her own quadrant. The game is otherwise the same.

Each of these variations can also be played with "wrap around". Wrap around occurs when a player plays off of a corner that is at the sides of the board. For example, with a blue i5 played from the blue corner toward yellow, the blue player can play off of the upper right corner of the i5 and put a piece at the bottom of the board 5 squares from the green corner. Sides of the same color still cannot touch in this variation, even after the wrap around. In the blue i5 example, the 5 squares along the bottom of the board starting from the green corner is off limits for blue because of the blue i5 along the top of the board.

What Blokus variations do you play?

names for Pluto's new moons

Besides Charon, two new moons were recently discovered to orbit Pluto. What names would you give them?

Pluto, planet or not...

Is Pluto a planet?

Puzzle Time 2

Part 2 of the Blokus puzzle in the last post:

What if it is allowed to go around corners?

Puzzle Time!

The four Blokus pieces that appear off the board on the front page of blokus.com are:

Blue Z
Yellow X
Red Y
Green W

The Blokus piece that appears in Community > Puzzles on blokus.com is the Blue F. Moving the square that is pointing towards the person in the picture up by one unit transforms the Blue F into the Blue X. Moving that same square down and around the corner to create the Blue Y is not allowed in this puzzle. Any square in the Blue F can be moved, as long as only one square is moved (along the edge but not around a corner) and it transforms into another Blokus piece. What other Blokus pieces can the Blue F transform to in this fashion?

init post

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