Fun 'n' Games

ONE AWAY: This weekend we were in full on Seahawks mode, what with the home team being just one game away from the Super Bowl.

We had a houseful of friends over on Sunday, and suffered our way through four quarters of tense football. It wasn't until there were 22 seconds left in the game until I felt not miserable. And a minute or two later, I felt great. Seahawks to the Super Bowl, for the second time in their history!

LOOMING: Today, Annabelle finally broke out the Rainbow Loom she received for Christmas and set about learning how it works.

Christian helped her a bit and before long, she was cranking out bracelets. She was Most Pleased.

WAKE UP CALL: Today was a huge day for the European Space Agency. For the past 31 months, their Rosetta - a comet-chasing spacecraft - has been in slumber.

Launched in 2004, Rosetta is headed for a meeting with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Rosetta went into slumber in June of 2011, operating on solar energy alone.  Today, per schedule was wake up day!

Graphic: European Space Agency

Naturally, there was a fair amount of excitement surrounding waking up a spacecraft after a 2.5 year slumber. Needless to say, ESA officials were thrilled when Rosetta woke up exactly as scheduled.

photo: ESA
“We have our comet-chaser back,” said Alvaro Giménez, ESA’s Director of Science and Robotic Exploration, in a press release. “With Rosetta, we will take comet exploration to a new level. This incredible mission continues our history of ‘firsts’ at comets, building on the technological and scientific achievements of our first deep space mission Giotto, which returned the first close-up images of a comet nucleus as it flew past Halley in 1986.”

If Rosetta connects per plan, it will be the very first space mission to rendezvous with a comet, land on a comet’s surface, and the first to follow a comet as it swings around the Sun. To me, that sounds like trying to thread tiny moving needle!  As of today's Rosetta is about 9 million km from its target. 

                         

Upon wake up, @ESA_Rosetta's Twitter account declared, "Hello, World!"

Here's a short video about Rosetta's wake up call. 

GAME ON: This afternoon, we finally got around to trying out one of Christian's Christmas presents, Star Trek Catan.

COMPLICATED game. The set up and learning curve took us about an hour.

We finally hit our stride, and CJ was today's victor.