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The first mobile phone call was made on this day in 1973. Martin Cooper, using a prototype of the Motorola DynaTAC, placed a call from the streets of New York to Bell Labs in New Jersey. The device was 9 inches tall, had a talk-time of 35 minutes, and took 10 hours to recharge.

a post-doc was doing a guest seminar at my institute and at the beginning of his presentation he was explaining why he chose birds for his evolutionary analysis - so he said "well first of all, because birds are the best and most interesting animals and it's fun to study them" and a few professors in the room gave him a very serious nod

Head-Up Displays (HUD) in aircrafts

A HUD is a transparent screen that displays flight information in the pilot's line of sight, allowing them to maintain focus on the outside environment. This technology enhances safety and situational awareness by reducing the need for pilots to look away from their forward view to check instrument readings.

Me after spending hours in the lab only to get a .05% yield

What We Learned from Flying a Helicopter on Mars

The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter made history – not only as the first aircraft to perform powered, controlled flight on another world – but also for exceeding expectations, pushing the limits, and setting the stage for future NASA aerial exploration of other worlds.

Built as a technology demonstration designed to perform up to five experimental test flights over 30 days, Ingenuity performed flight operations from the Martian surface for almost three years. The helicopter ended its mission on Jan. 25, 2024, after sustaining damage to its rotor blades during its 72nd flight.

So, what did we learn from this small but mighty helicopter?

We can fly rotorcraft in the thin atmosphere of other planets.

Ingenuity proved that powered, controlled flight is possible on other worlds when it took to the Martian skies for the first time on April 19, 2021.

Flying on planets like Mars is no easy feat: The Red Planet has a significantly lower gravity – one-third that of Earth’s – and an extremely thin atmosphere, with only 1% the pressure at the surface compared to our planet. This means there are relatively few air molecules with which Ingenuity’s two 4-foot-wide (1.2-meter-wide) rotor blades can interact to achieve flight.

Ingenuity performed several flights dedicated to understanding key aerodynamic effects and how they interact with the structure and control system of the helicopter, providing us with a treasure-trove of data on how aircraft fly in the Martian atmosphere.

Now, we can use this knowledge to directly improve performance and reduce risk on future planetary aerial vehicles.

Creative solutions and “ingenuity” kept the helicopter flying longer than expected.

Over an extended mission that lasted for almost 1,000 Martian days (more than 33 times longer than originally planned), Ingenuity was upgraded with the ability to autonomously choose landing sites in treacherous terrain, dealt with a dead sensor, dusted itself off after dust storms, operated from 48 different airfields, performed three emergency landings, and survived a frigid Martian winter.

Fun fact: To keep costs low, the helicopter contained many off-the-shelf-commercial parts from the smartphone industry - parts that had never been tested in deep space. Those parts also surpassed expectations, proving durable throughout Ingenuity’s extended mission, and can inform future budget-conscious hardware solutions.

There is value in adding an aerial dimension to interplanetary surface missions.

Ingenuity traveled to Mars on the belly of the Perseverance rover, which served as the communications relay for Ingenuity and, therefore, was its constant companion. The helicopter also proved itself a helpful scout to the rover.

After its initial five flights in 2021, Ingenuity transitioned to an “operations demonstration,” serving as Perseverance’s eyes in the sky as it scouted science targets, potential rover routes, and inaccessible features, while also capturing stereo images for digital elevation maps.

Airborne assets like Ingenuity unlock a new dimension of exploration on Mars that we did not yet have – providing more pixels per meter of resolution for imaging than an orbiter and exploring locations a rover cannot reach.

Tech demos can pay off big time.

Ingenuity was flown as a technology demonstration payload on the Mars 2020 mission, and was a high risk, high reward, low-cost endeavor that paid off big. The data collected by the helicopter will be analyzed for years to come and will benefit future Mars and other planetary missions.

Just as the Sojourner rover led to the MER-class (Spirit and Opportunity) rovers, and the MSL-class (Curiosity and Perseverance) rovers, the team believes Ingenuity’s success will lead to future fleets of aircraft at Mars.

In general, NASA’s Technology Demonstration Missions test and advance new technologies, and then transition those capabilities to NASA missions, industry, and other government agencies. Chosen technologies are thoroughly ground- and flight-tested in relevant operating environments — reducing risks to future flight missions, gaining operational heritage and continuing NASA’s long history as a technological leader.

You can fall in love with robots on another planet.

Following in the tracks of beloved Martian rovers, the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter built up a worldwide fanbase. The Ingenuity team and public awaited every single flight with anticipation, awe, humor, and hope.

Check out #ThanksIngenuity on social media to see what’s been said about the helicopter’s accomplishments.

Learn more about Ingenuity’s accomplishments here. And make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

The Chemical Structure of Redstone

So I was curious about what the chemical structure of Redstone looks like, and Minecraft Education Edition, albeit unintentionally, gives us a canon look into what Redstone is made of:

In Minecraft Education Edition, putting a Redstone Block into a Material Reducer shows that it's composed of 31 Carbon, 31 Uranium, and 38 Unobtanium, which we can assume to be measured in grams

Dividing the Redstone Block into Redstone Dust, each Redstone Dust is then composed of approximately 3.4 Carbon, 3.4 Uranium, and 4.2 Unobtanium

Again assuming that's measured in grams, that's 0.17 cm³ of Uranium, 1.496 cm³ of Carbon, and ???³ of Unobtanium per Redstone Dust

So what does this tell us about the chemical structure of Redstone? Basing this on Redstone Dust's composition, we can estimate that each Redstone molecule is composed of 3 Carbon atoms, 3 Uranium atoms, 4 Unobtanium atoms, a little under half of the time it binds to an extra Uranium and/or Carbon, and 20% of the time it binds to an extra Unobtanium

This also has some horrifying implications for how Redstone works:

Redstone would be extremely volatile as the radioactive decay from Unobtanium and Uranium would occasionally release Helium ions through alpha radiation, sometimes breaking apart Carbon into two Beryllium atoms (as it absorbs the extra proton and neutron from the Uranium) or merging into Oxygen

So Redstone should, in theory, be extremely flammable and potentially explosive, which implies that cave static, or the player mining Redstone with an Iron Pickaxe, could lead to a spark that causes an explosive cave-in

As Unobtanium is just a placeholder for unobtainable elements (hence the name), I'm going to estimate Unobtanium in this case as Unbinilium, the placeholder name for element 120

Why?

I'm estimating the Unobtanium as Redstone as being larger than the largest man-made element, Oganesson, which holds an impressive 118 protons

Each valence electron shell, from innermost to outermost, can bind with 2, 8, 18, 32, 32, 18, and 8 shells respectively, so I'd like Unobtanium to be an element we haven't discovered yet, and consequently I'd like to jump up to the next shell

While I could estimate with element 119's placeholder, Ununennium, it would have one electron in the next shell, so Unbinilium allows for easier chemical binding

So what does this molecule look like then? Well, horrifyingly...

It looks like this. As Redstone forms in crystal lattices, and only two Carbon atoms are free to bind, I can absolutely see why it's so brittle that it breaks into powder.

This makes the structure of Redstone:

C3U3Uno4 (55% of molecules) C4U3Uno4 (13% of molecules) C3U4Uno4 (13% of molecules) C4U4Uno4 (7% of molecules) C3U3Uno5 (5% of molecules) C4U3Uno5 (3% of molecules) C3U4Uno5 (3% of molecules) C4U4Uno5 (1% of molecules)

An extremely radioactive, flammable, and explosive compound.

Galaxies

Unimaginably huge collections of gas, dust, stars, and even planets, galaxies come in many shapes and sizes. Some are spirals, such as our own galaxy, others are like squashed balls, and some have no shape at all.

From the book Knowledge Encyclopedia Science! (DK)

This Zenith Movie was taken on Sol 4001 (2023-11-07) at approximately 8:04 LTST and a solar longitude of 145.03°. (What is this?)

NATIVE CARBON DIOXIDE FOUND ON JUPITER’S MOON EUROPA