nocto

pioneer 10 left earth on 3rd march 1972, 35 days before i was born, and has travelled 12.2 billion kilometres since then. nasa received their final weak signal from the spacecraft on 22nd january 2003, 35 days ago, and don’t expect to hear anything else from it.

“Pioneer 10 was a pioneer in the true sense of the word,” said Colleen Hartman, director of NASA’s Solar System Exploration Division. “After it passed Mars on its long journey into deep space, it was venturing into places where nothing built by humanity had ever gone before.”

[found via megnut]

following fine weblog tradition i have to introduce you to the new half of my household. peppa, small black male and approximately nine weeks old (which makes him just about a christmas baby i think) and his mother, zan, a sort of grey tabbyish colour and about a year old. mother and son are both settling in well, though they are pretty fazed by the flash which means all my photos are of the kind of hazy natural light not quite in focus type.

balloon v1.0 is a fascinating report of building and launching a weather balloon with an onboard linux/gps/digital camera in california. the story of the chase to follow it and find where it lands is great, as are the aerial photos it takes. i love stuff like this where people put bits and bobs of technology together and create something really interesting.

With the current flight path, it seemed possible (but statistically unlikely) that the balloon could land right *on* the freeway, which would be really bad. I was picturing a major pile-up on I-5, caused by the remains of my experiment, with my name and contact info prominently displayed on the outside.

[found via jwz]