Some extras:
A frisbee-shooting robot built by students of Westlake High School using NI products barely missed the face of Vice President of Marketing Ray Almgren. Better luck next time!
Robotic elephants build with Lego Mindstorms EV3 prepare to take over the world:
This is me and NASA’s next Lunar Lander. That things is going to be on the Moon. With my fingerprints on it.
Your story inspired me as a kid to pursue science and engineering.
“A heat shield has to slow the spacecraft from 13,000 mph to about 800 mph. Then a giant supersonic parachute has to unfurl properly to slow the rover further to about 200 mph. Then onboard radar has to detect the surface, and rocket engines aboard a kind of jet pack have to fire, slowing Curiosity to a crawl. Finally, a bridle has to lower the rover from the jet pack to the surface.”
…and it worked. NASA’s Curiosity rover landed a few hours on Mars. It’s the size of a small car. How incredibly cool.
Photos of fireworks are cool. Photos of lightning are cooler. Photos of comets are even cooler.
A single photo with fireworks, lightning and a comet is SICK. Full size image here.
For those of you who are marveled by the engineering feats of mankind: This is a really neat video called Ascent – Commemorating Shuttle. It has about forty minutes of high quality video of a Space Shuttle takeoff narrated by a NASA engineer.
Sit back and enjoy.
