Going for the Gold

GAME ON: We've watched several Olympic events so far. Everything from archery to equestrian events, gymnastics to water polo to badminton, judo and more. Inspired, I told the kids we'd be having a very local Olympics of our own.

We headed up to the neighborhood park. There, monkey bars provided today's challenge. 


First, we had a "hang off." The kids each hung on as long as they could. We were going to do a best of 3, but when CJ won the first two, a third round wasn't necessary.

Up next: Crossing the great divide. CJ and Annabelle both declared that crossing the monkey bars wasn't their gift. I told them that didn't mean they shouldn't try.


Annabelle didn't exactly give it her all. She dropped off a couple bars in. Not exactly an Olympic-worthy effort. 

CJ, on the other hand, dug deep and I'll be darned if he didn't cross the bars the entire way for the very first time. Good for him! Definitely gold medal worthy. And so, after one day of events, the medal count is CJ: 2, Annabelle: 0.

ROCK HUNTING: This morning the kids test drove an interactive Mars rover feature on MarsQuestOnline.org.

From reading the introduction to the exercise, we learned that because radio signals take at least 20 minutes to reach Mars, you could never steer the rover in real time, and that Mars rover Sojourner could only receive one command sequence a day from NASA Mission Controllers. 

Normally the kids want to just dive right into online games - and today was no exception - but I told them that for this exercise they HAD to read the directions. They were straightforward.

It sounded simple enough, so we cued the game up and took a test run on my computer first. We had eight mission days to try to collect 5 rocks. The rover is the little rectangle that has rolled off the upper yellow-ish ramp near the center of the screen.

We entered 10 moves and I think on our first attempt we wound up in Nowheresville. But that did give us a better idea of how the rover moved, so then the kids each went to their own computers.


They each completed two missions and each got 3 of the 5 rocks both times. Here's the path Annabelle's rover took on one of her attempts. 

The intro told us that it was possible to get every target with one day to spare. We'll have to keep trying until the mission is accomplished. Failure is not an option. 

CAPTAIN'S LOG: Today, NASA released a new video narrated by the one and only Captain Kirk (William Shatner) about Mars Science Laboratory's travels, landing and mission. Titled "The Grand Entrance," NASA reports the video will be used at events around the country and on the Internet and social media to educate the public about Curiosity and build awareness about its landing at 10:31 p.m. Aug. 5, Pac Coast time, 11:31 EDT on Aug 6 for right hand coasters. 

We couldn't help ourselves. CJ, Annabelle and I all started clapping when the video was over. 

Another Star Trek family member, Wil Wheaton (Wesley Crusher of TNG fame) narrated a very similar  video. 

And speaking of videos about the Mars Science Laboratory, a Tweet today let me know about a video by PhDetours about MSL. it's a fun look at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where most of Curiosity was built. I encourage you to check it out. 

In case you haven't caught on, I'm going to be blathering nearly incessantly about MSL between now and Aug. 6. Just sayin'.