Just Another Wednesday

WOODSY:  Today's high was expected to be 95, and our dogs have certain expectations of us, and those expectations include a walk, so we went early and in the shade. We're lucky Discovery Park is close to home. 

We were but two blocks from home when the kids started screaming about a spider. But it wasn't the usual spider screams you'd imagine. Rather, they were worried about a spider who had built a web on our car, including on the passenger side rear view mirror. 

Fortunately, he managed to hang on from our house to the park, and at that point we 'rehomed' him to the nature preserve. May he or she live long and prosper.

We went for a good long hike in the park, purposely taking forks in the road unfamiliar.

But at this point, we know the general geography of the park enough to never get too far off track. 

We made this "treepee" one of our last stops in the park.

MEANWHILE, OUT THERE: Weeks have passed since the awesome and historic pass of NASA's New Horizons out Pluto's way. While that event has come and gone, the data continues to pour in. This wonderful video, from the PBS Digital Studios' "It's Okay to Be Smart," highlights some of the things we've learned since the encounter. 

https://youtu.be/WwRvWMRUhKE

Today, we also took a couple of minutes today to watch the latest trailer for "The Martian," a movie that's set to arrive in theaters on October 2.

Plenty of people at NASA are geeked about the novel and movie, and today the agency issued a press release featuring Nine Real NASA Technologies in 'The Martian.'

The release noted, " 'The Martian' merges the fictional and factual narratives about Mars, building upon the work NASA and others have done exploring Mars and moving it forward into the 2030s, when NASA astronauts are regularly traveling to Mars and living on the surface to explore. Although the action takes place 20 years in the future, NASA is already developing many of the technologies that appear in the film"  

You should read the full story (here: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/nine-real-nasa-technologies-in-the-martian), but in a nutshell, parallels include NASA crews training for long-duration deep space missions in the Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA); Veggie, a deployable fresh-food production system
 Aboard the International Space Station; oxygen generation and water recovery systems; spacesuit innovations; solar arrays and  ion propulsion for space travel; rovers for travel on planet; and using Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators(RTGs) to provide electrical power for two dozen space missions.