Table of Contents
I'm a novelist and have an interest in space science and physics. I've been a programmer for more than 40 years and I like reviewing new and up-and-coming authors. I have become a committed member of the OpenSimulator community.
Please consider registering (see top of page) to help support this site. Your personal data isn't shared with anyone, but it makes me feel good.
7 Minutes of Terror
It takes seven minutes for a vehicles to descend through the Martian atmosphere to the surface. The distance between Earth and Mars is always greater than seven light minutes when these landings take place, so by the time Earth gets the message that the vehicles has made contact with the atmosphere, it is already on the ground. Hopefully in one piece.
News 11th Feb 2021
My internet connection has now been established in my new home, and the Raspberry Pi's are working their hearts out to update the pages containing NASA data. There is a brief period that Mars Weather data is temporarily lost (I assume I'll be able to recover it when the data is next uploaded to the PDS repository in about 6 months time).
Meanwhile, it is just a week until Perseverance makes its guided landing in Jezero Crater on the flanks of Syrtis Major in the northern hemisphere of Mars. I am assured that the rover will be sending back weather data which I'll be able to pick up from the NASA servers in the same way I've been picking up the weather data from InSight. I'll start a new section for Mars Weather with pages for InSight data, InSight data (recalibrated) from the PDS archive, and Perseverance (and later Perseverance recalibrated).
It'll be a while before Perseverance begins sending data back, but feel free to hold your breath!
Animal Farm Part 2
In an earlier article I explained why using a wiki farm could be productive for someone who is on the move or likes to preserve previous versions of documents, and also for someone like me who uses multiple operating systems.
It's worth noting too that collaborating becomes a lot easier using a wiki, and since the platform preserves old versions of each document, it provides a safety net too. That aside, I thought I'd share how this all works for the user.