Author: Arjen

Beagle 2: Interplanetary Lost & Found

http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/01/lost-beagle-2-mars-lander-found-11-years-after-launch/

Beagle 2The UK-made  Beagle 2 lander has been found on the surface of Mars more than a decade after it was thought to be lost forever.

The 2003 launch was the result of a collaboration of UK academics, whose nifty lander rode to the Red Planet aboard the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express spacecraft. By December 19 it had reached its destination and was released from the spacecraft.

“It was due to enter the atmosphere at about 02.51 on the 25th December,” said Mark Sims, professor of astrobiology and space instrumentation at the University of Leicester. But nobody heard from Beagle 2 following its ejection from the Mars Express and it was presumed lost. Sims said he had “given up hope” of ever knowing what happened to the lander.

Now, thanks to images taken by Nasa’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), we have at last found the Beagle 2’s final resting place. Images show that it did indeed make it to the surface of Mars and even landed where it was expected to, at the Isidis Planitia basin. For 11 long years, the Beagle 2’s remaining team members have been scouring images captured by HiRISE for signs of their design. That work—and unbelievable patience—has paid off, because the images tell a story of how exactly the lander got to where it is today.

Kano – make a computer

Interesting recent Kickstarter project: Kano.

Kano box and contents

Uses Raspberry Pi as a basis, with a tweaked Linux that contains specific apps, on which various user challenges are based.

There are a few recent projects that do similar things, we’ll have to see which catch on (perhaps all!)

Mum inquiring about kid’s hacking ability

mom-mobile-google-logo

Funny, but… it’s actually an indication of how little this parent understands about an environment that her kids are quite comfortable with and spend a great deal of time in – that is, computers and online.

OpenSTEM is working on materials and workshops to assist parents (generally through schools) with getting to grips with this. We’re starting with events in the Brisbane area in the new year.

ArduBlock – Visual Arduino Programming

ArduBlock is a visual drag&drop programming plugin for the Arduino IDE (integrated development environment – the usual tool we use for programming Arduino boards/chips).

It acts as a tool plugin in the regular IDE – you install it by putting the ardublock.jar (Java) file in a specific subdirectory (depends on your operating system and configuration), and then it just shows up in the Tools menu of the IDE.

Then, programming works similar to MIT’s Scratch, and students may already be familiar with that:

ArduBlock visual programming example: LED Blink

Depending on the students’ age, this can be very useful. It can be an extra way for primary school age children to get started with Arduino electronics.

For high school, I reckon it’s very important to provide opportunity to dig into every bit of systems, so that there are no “black boxes” involved.  Still, it’s fine to (for instance) start with a visual environment and then see what that looks like in plain code!

We’ll explore this more on OpenSTEM – the trend with many educational materials appears to have been to simplify, and I’m doubtful as to the need and benefits of that. Kids (can) understand an awful lot more than they’re often given credit for. When kids are taught below their level, it makes for boredom. What a pity!

With kids being very quick at picking up new technology in particular, it is more likely a reflection of the adults (including educators) feeling overwhelmed and thus trying to reduce, rather than actually aiming towards the students’ educational edge.