Tag Archives: NASA

Grow Beyond Earth Contest

Posted on by Carl Stevens

3 years ago I started participating in the Grow Beyond Earth contest.  It’s a collaboration between NASA and the Fairchild Botanical Gardens in Florida.  The goal is to create a device that will grow food on the International Space Station.  That sounded like fun to me!  Year one focused on designing the growing area to take advantage of the 0G environment and fit in a 50cm cube.   I was fortunate enough to be a finalist and walked away with some prize money.  I was not able to participate in the 2nd year but I am back in for year 3. 

This year the focus is on creating a robotic harvesting and planting.  If you want to read all about it you can do so at the Make:Projects link below.  This has been a fun project and I learned so much.

https://makeprojects.com/project/0g-garden—year-3-professional-entry

Curiosity EDL Party at Bucketworks this Sunday

Posted on by Pipkins, Royce

Blow off your Monday and come watch the edge-of-your-seat landing of the Mars Curiosity rover! Help us celebrate its successful landing or weep inconsolably with us if it splatters all over the Martian surface! We’ll get together, talk a little about some of the ways we’ve seen both success and failure in Mars exploration in an effort to provide context, and then settle down to watch NASA TV report on the telemetry stream that will indicate success or failure.

If you don’t know, the EDL cycle for the Curiosity rover is insane. Landing this rover will be an amazing accomplishment. Check this video:
Mars Curiosity Video

Register for this free party here: http://mslparty2012bw-estw.eventbrite.com/  Ya, its pretty late, but you didn’t want to face Monday Aug 6th anyway did you?

I’m sure there will be a hangout as well. Check back here updates on that.