The Nerdiest Video Game Ever
By Dr. Tony Phillips
NASA has a job opening. Wanted: People of all ages to sort, stack, and catalogue terabytes of simulated data from a satellite that launches in 2015. Agile thumbs required.
Sorting terabytes of data? It’s more fun than it sounds.
In fact it’s a game: Satellite Insight. The Space Place Team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory created the entertaining app for iPhones to get the word out about GOES-R, an advanced Earth science satellite built by NOAA and NASA.
Described by the Los Angeles Times as possibly “the nerdiest game ever,” Satellite Insight may be downloaded for free from Apple’s app store. Be careful, though, once you start playing it’s hard to stop. Some reviewers have likened it to Tetris, one of the most popular video games of all time.
GOES, short for “Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite,” is the workhorse spacecraft for weather forecasters. NOAA operates two (at a time) in geosynchronous orbit, one above the west coast of N. America and one above the east coast. They monitor clouds, wind, rain, hurricanes, tornadoes and even solar flares. The GOES program has been in action since 1975.
GOES-R is the next-generation satellite with advanced technologies far beyond those of the older GOES satellites. It has sensors for lightning detection, wildfire mapping, storm tracking, search and rescue, solar imaging, and more. Many of the sensors are trailblazers. For example, the Advanced Baseline Imager has 60 times the capability of the current imager—16 channels instead of 5. It has twice the spatial resolution and five times the temporal refresh rate, including the 30-second imaging of weather systems over a region of 1000 km x 1000 km. Also, the Geostationary Lightning Mapper can count and pinpoint lightning bolts over the Americas 24/7. It’s the first such detector to fly on a geosynchronous satellite, and it could lead to transformative advances in severe storm warning capability.
All in all, GOES-R represents a “huge technological leap from the current GOES.” We know this because Satellite Insight tells us so. The app has an informative “Learn More” feature where players can find out about the satellite and the data they have been sorting.
Which brings us back to sorting data. It’s a bit like eating Cheerios; just don’t tell the kids it’s nutritious, and they love it. Helping GOES-R gather and stash data from all those advanced sensors is just as satisfying, too—a dose of Earth science wrapped in thumb-flying fun.
More information about Satellite Insight may be found on the web at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/satellite-insight/id463588902?mt=8. The game also available in web form (flying thumbs optional) at spaceplace.nasa.gov/satellite-insight.
This article was provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Caption:
New iPhone game is first NOAA app and only the second NASA game app. Just as with the real GOES-R, the challenge with Satellite Insight is to keep up with the massive influx of weather and other environmental data.
Next Monthly Meeting is January 14th at 7 PM at River Ridge Observatory
The Central Arkansas Astronomical Society (C.A.A.S.) will hold its 1st Meeting of 2012 on Saturday, Jan 14, 7 p.m. in the clear, dark skies of the River Ridge Observatory (between the cities of Wye and Roland, AR) . Meetings are always the second Saturday of each month.
Never looked through a telescope? YOU are invited! Like looking at the stars, but don’t know a thing about them? Come and bring your friends! You don’t need to be a member to attend and there is no charge to visit; see and look through all the other scopes; learn how to use “that telescope you were given as a gift”; and love the beauty of the night’s sky, shooting stars, nebula and galaxies …together with friends. All are welcome.
DOOR PRIZE: That night, all in attendance are eligible for the drawing for 2 more HUBBLE‘s best space pics photo books.
–All, please email or bring a list of Presentation Topics you’d like to hear for 2012 and we’ll share/compile them during the meeting. If you think of one or many topics, maybe someone else will jump on one idea and they will give a 5 minute – 45 minute presentation on it later this year.
If you want to present a topic [ YOU WOULD BE MY HERO ] let me know so the secretary and I can schedule it on the month you want, and advertise it to the gang.
You do NOT need to be an expert, just talk about what you love and what you learned. ( p.s. I didn’t know a thing about the Mayan 2012 Calendar until I Googled and Wiki’ed everything )
Hopefully we’ll be getting an updates regarding:
William Bryden — he is designing shirts for 2012 with Carolaina helping with info from last order.
Jim Fisher — ordering CAAS business cards and fixing “tax exempt” 501C status with local tax lawyer. On that note, I’ll be moving that the Club pay for all the Cards and distribute 20 or more per year to every member…so we can actually do membership outreach “that works” by giving out a card in the dark (or at work / school / church) rather than hoping guests and strangers remember a funny-spelling-acronym-filled-website-name …24 hours later.
After the short welcome and meeting at 7 p.m., skies permitting, we will adjourn to the observing field for fun and fellowship under the planets and stars.
If you need directions to the River Ridge Observatory, please email info@caasastro.org and they will email you the coordinates for Google as well as the password protected Driving Directions located on our website Directions to CAAS .
I wish you a blessed New Year and amazing 2012.
Blue Skies
Bill Engberg
C.A.A.S. el Presidente, Boss of the Bolides, Captain of the Van Allen’s …and chief bottle washer
Dawn Takes a Closer Look
By Dr. Marc Rayman
Dawn is the first space mission with an itinerary that includes orbiting two separate solar system destinations. It is also the only spacecraft ever to orbit an object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The spacecraft accomplishes this feat using ion propulsion, a technology first proven in space on the highly successful Deep Space 1 mission, part of NASA’s New Millennium program.
Launched in September 2007, Dawn arrived at protoplanet Vesta in July 2011. It will orbit and study Vesta until July 2012, when it will leave orbit for dwarf planet Ceres, also in the asteroid belt.
Dawn can maneuver to the orbit best suited for conducting each of its scientific observations. After months mapping this alien world from higher altitudes, Dawn spiraled closer to Vesta to attain a low altitude orbit, the better to study Vesta’s composition and map its complicated gravity field.
Changing and refining Dawn’s orbit of this massive, irregular, heterogeneous body is one of the most complicated parts of the mission. In addition, to meet all the scientific objectives, the orientation of this orbit needs to change.
These differing orientations are a crucial element of the strategy for gathering the most scientifically valuable data on Vesta. It generally requires a great deal of maneuvering to change the plane of a spacecraft’s orbit. The ion propulsion system allows the probe to fly from one orbit to another without the penalty of carrying a massive supply of propellant. Indeed, one of the reasons that traveling from Earth to Vesta (and later Ceres) requires ion propulsion is the challenge of tilting the orbit around the sun.
Although the ion propulsion system accomplishes the majority of the orbit change, Dawn’s navigators are enlisting Vesta itself. Some of the ion thrusting was designed in part to put the spacecraft in certain locations from which Vesta would twist its orbit toward the target angle for the low-altitude orbit. As Dawn rotates and the world underneath it revolves, the spacecraft feels a changing pull. There is always a tug downward, but because of Vesta’s heterogeneous interior structure, sometimes there is also a slight force to one side or another. With their knowledge of the gravity field, the mission team plotted a course that took advantage of these variations to get a free ride.
The flight plan is a complex affair of carefully timed thrusting and coasting. Very far from home, the spacecraft is making excellent progress in its expedition at a fascinating world that, until a few months ago, had never seen a probe from Earth.
Keep up with Dawn’s progress by following the Chief Engineer’s (yours truly’s) journal at http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/journal.asp. And check out the illustrated story in verse of “Professor Starr’s Dream Trip: Or, how a little technology goes a long way,” at http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/story-prof-starr.
This article was provided courtesy of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
This full view of the giant asteroid Vesta was taken by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, as part of a rotation characterization sequence on July 24, 2011, at a distance of 5,200 kilometers (3,200 miles). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA