Tag NASA

Mars Images App Allows You To See Latest Mars Pictures From Opportunity Rover

According to Wired, NASA has released a new app for iPhone and iPad, allowing iOS users to receive latest Mars images directly from NASA’s Opportunity rover.  How directly?  I’m not sure!  Nonetheless, I think this app will be able to excite science geeks.  Unfortunately, the amazing sturdy Opportunity rover (launched in 2003 and made to Mars in 2004) could not send images in color, or else I would be just excited as those science geeks.  I know, I’m asking too much, but it’s a perspective from a non-science geek anyway!  So, the next time you ponder on what is up with Mars, you can always pull out Mars Images app and check out some Mars photos.  Don’t forget to pray for Opportunity rover’s long life, OK?  For your information, Mars Images app can be found on Apple App Store for iPhone and iPad.

Source:  http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/01/mars-photos-app/

Japanese Made First Flying Sphere Craft Ever In The World?

Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn (right) and Padawan O...

Image via Wikipedia

While pursuing whatever they had in mind for aircrafts, Japanese Defense Ministry came up with a sphere flying prototype.  The sphere body gave the flying craft the ability to land on all types of terrain.  It could even hover and roll along the wall vertically in midair if it wanted to.  It could fly up to 40 miles per hour.

To read more is to go insane with me on a fictional and hypothetical kind of imagination.  Anyhow, read on my Jedi!

Imagining that we could build a much bigger version of it to carry humans.  Inside the sphere craft, it should have a compartment which should be protected from the shock and external gyration.  The inner compartment should roll or spin to create artificial, controllable gravity.  While inside earth atmosphere, the inner compartment should manage somehow to allow passengers feel earth’s own gravity.

The inner compartment should hold an even innermost compartment, and this innermost compartment should not spin but stay steady so the passengers could walk around normally as if they hadn’t yet left earth.

Coupling this sphere flying craft with exotic power system which nobody had thought of yet to allow this very craft to fly even faster than anything we had ever imagined.  I think we could have something so awesome which might be used in space for interplanetary traveling.  Of course, the sphere flying craft should be able to fly within earth atmosphere also!

NASA’s New Toy Needs No Moving Part To Cool Massive Heat Conducive Devices

There are good reasons why tax payers need to fund NASA generously each year.  Usually, the things NASA researches and explores with may not have immediate impact to our daily lives, but soon or later something from NASA will seep into society in a big and positive way!  One perfect example was one of those earliest versions of microchip was developed by Texas Instrument, but the the project was funded by NASA for space program — this unique circumstance was eventually gave birth to modern microchips that we’re using today.  Some people even mention that mobile phone was made possible by NASA!  So, when NASA has announced that it has a working prototype of a cooling system with no moving part that is slim and small as a human finger but yet withstanding extreme heat, some of us probably are amazed but not totally surprised by NASA’s new toy.

This new toy of NASA is known as electrohydrodynamic (EHD) pump, but it does not really relying on any moving part to pump the heat away from certain mechanical devices.  Instead, the pump relies on electric field to work its magic.  To tell the truth, it’s hard to understand how it really works, but NASA isn’t joking about their new toy’s potential.  In fact, NASA is aiming to ever improve EHD technology.  You never know NASA may one day be able to shrink the size of their new toy as small as a grain of sand, and then use variant of it to cool tons of heat from ever heat conducive, small computing devices.  Perhaps, we can use EHD technology to create portable airconditioning such as clothes that channel heat away from humans’ bodies during a super hot summer day.  I don’t know, but it seems this technology has huge potential to me.  In fact, I think everyone is seeing the same thing!  How about you?

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