Fired Up

Technician load the 'golden record' Earth's official communication with extra-terrestrials, onto Voyager 1 - NASA photograph

THE VOYAGE CONTINUES: Some astounding and impressive news came across our desk here this morning (via social media, truth be told). 

We read news about the Voyager 1 and 2 any time an article comes up and are always impressed that these spacecraft keep sailing along after four decades, no to our solar system's fringes.

Today's news involved the fact that a set of thrusters aboard the Voyager 1 spacecraft were successfully fired up Wednesday, Nov. 29, after 37 years without use. Wow! Imagine trying to start your car here on Earth if it sat in your driveway for 37 years. Not likely that it would fire up. Now imagine your vehicle 11.7 billion miles down the road ... Remarkable!

The press release from NASA read, in part: 

Voyager 1, NASA's farthest and fastest spacecraft, is the only human-made object in interstellar space, the environment between the stars. The spacecraft, which has been flying for 40 years, relies on small devices called thrusters to orient itself so it can communicate with Earth. These thrusters fire in tiny pulses, or "puffs," lasting mere milliseconds, to subtly rotate the spacecraft so that its antenna points at our planet. Now, the Voyager team is able to use a set of four backup thrusters, dormant since 1980.

"With these thrusters that are still functional after 37 years without use, we will be able to extend the life of the Voyager 1 spacecraft by two to three years," said Suzanne Dodd, project manager for Voyager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

Since 2014, engineers have noticed that the thrusters Voyager 1 has been using to orient the spacecraft, called "attitude control thrusters," have been degrading. Over time, the thrusters require more puffs to give off the same amount of energy. At 13 billion miles from Earth, there's no mechanic shop nearby to get a tune-up.

The Voyager team assembled a group of propulsion experts at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, to study the problem. Chris Jones, Robert Shotwell, Carl Guernsey and Todd Barber analyzed options and predicted how the spacecraft would respond in different scenarios. They agreed on an unusual solution: Try giving the job of orientation to a set of thrusters that had been asleep for 37 years.

"The Voyager flight team dug up decades-old data and examined the software that was coded in an outdated assembler language, to make sure we could safely test the thrusters," said Jones, chief engineer at JPL.

In the early days of the mission, Voyager 1 flew by Jupiter, Saturn, and important moons of each. To accurately fly by and point the spacecraft's instruments at a smorgasbord of targets, engineers used "trajectory correction maneuver," or TCM, thrusters that are identical in size and functionality to the attitude control thrusters, and are located on the back side of the spacecraft. But because Voyager 1's last planetary encounter was Saturn, the Voyager team hadn't needed to use the TCM thrusters since November 8, 1980. Back then, the TCM thrusters were used in a more continuous firing mode; they had never been used in the brief bursts necessary to orient the spacecraft.

Hats off to Aerojet Rocketdyn, who developed all of Voyager's thrusters. On Wednesday, the aged thrusters were tested for their ability to orient the spacecraft via 10-millisecond pulses. 

Due to Voyager 1's distance from Earth, the team working on the project had to wait while test results traveled through space, taking 19 hours and 35 minutes to reach a NASA's Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, California.

Upon receiving the positive results, "The mood was one of relief, joy and incredulity after witnessing these well-rested thrusters pick up the baton as if no time had passed at all," said Todd Barber, a JPL propulsion engineer.

The plan going forward is to switch to the TCM thrusters in January. To make the change, Voyager has to turn on one heater per thruster, which requires power -- a limited resource for the aging mission. When there is no longer enough power to operate the heaters, the team will switch back to the attitude control thrusters.

Because the thruster test was so successful, the team is likely to do a similar test on the TCM thrusters for Voyager 2 in a few weeks.

Here's a cool lookback to the Voyagers' launches. https://youtu.be/C1UBg4TPqX4

IT TAKES A VILLAGE: For a few hours this week, the kids and I worked on a monthly bulletin board we decorate. Its purpose is to highlight kids' birthdays that month. The hardest part is coming up with a different theme each month. We bandied about several ideas for December (Nutcracker, penguins, snowmen, reindeer), but settled on a gingerbread village for whatever reason. (Actually, probably due to my love of gingerbread.)

We used colored foam sheets, cardboard, pufff paint, decoative tape, beads, buttons and more.

CJ helped cut out any a 'gumdrop' shingle.

 And here's how it came together. (I blurred the students' names and birthdates in the photo below.) It's about 5 by 4 feet.

Holiday in the City

HOLIDAY INN: Yesterday, the kids went with my parents to go see The 5th Avenue Theatre's production of an adaption of the classic Christmas film Holiday Inn. Here's CJ's review of the musical:

For this year's holiday season, the 5th Avenue Theatre is doing a production of Irving Berlin's Holiday Inn, a play based off the film of the same name. The plot of Holiday Inn revolves around Jim Hardy (played by Eric Ankrim), a Broadway actor's, purchase of Mason Farm, a farm in Connecticut, and his repurposing of the farm to be an inn open during various holidays.

The play began with David Armstrong, the Executive Director and the Artistic Director of the 5th Avenue Theatre, introducing himself and the play to the audience. The 5th Avenue Theatre is apparently the first American theatre to do an independent production of Holiday Inn this season. Noticeably, as seen in the program, a large number of the actors were either in Elf, Grease, or Rent, or any combination of the three.

The performances at Holiday Inn were a noticeable improvement over that of The Secret Garden (the last 5th Avenue Theatre production I went to), even with actors that are easy to mix up. The soundtrack is also significantly better than that of The Secret Garden, likely due to having been composed by famed Russian-American composer Irving Berlin.

Irving Berlin was a Russian-American musician and composer who is best known for composing the song "White Christmas". Irving Berlin lived for over a century and composed over a thousand songs during his lifetime. After moving from Russia to America, Berlin began a job as a singing waiter, and soon expanded his repertoire into lyrics, composition, and publishing his and other persons' music. Berlin wrote the scores to 13 different Broadway muscials and wrote songs for 12 Hollywood films.

Berlin was the subject of Jerome Kern's iconic maxim "Irving Berlin has no place in American music - he is American music."

BEFORE THE SHOW: Last year, before visiting a screening of Allegiance (a play starring George Takei), we learned about the Pacific Place Snow Show tradition. In the holiday season of every year, the Pacific Place mall does "Snow Shows", short events where "snowflakes" that appear to be made out of soap bits are dropped from the upper level of the mall, down onto the shoppers at the bottom. Santa Claus is prominently present at the events.

CJ and Annabelle meeting Santa:

Annabelle and Santa waving at me:

CJ got to take a 1-second video (intended to be a selfie) with Santa:

Home Work

SCHOOL UNIFORMS: This morning, we hit the 'books' first thing, and first up was some Algebra. 

As we listened to a Khan Academy lecture about graphic inequalities with variables, I had to smile as I looked at the kids sitting on the bed, soaking it in. So comfortable and casual and peaceful and pleasant. What a great way to learn.

FAR OUT: We also made time this morning to check out stunning footage of a recent spacewalk a pair of astronauts took.

A NASA blog had this to say about the event: 

Expedition 53 Commander Randy Bresnik and Flight Engineer Joe Acaba of NASA completed a 6 hour, 49 minute spacewalk at 2:36 p.m. EDT. The two astronauts installed a new camera system on the Canadarm2 robotic arm’s latching end effector, an HD camera on the starboard truss of the station and replaced a fuse on the Dextre robotic arm extension.

The duo worked quickly and were able to complete several “get ahead” tasks. Acaba greased the new end effector on the robotic arm. Bresnik installed a new radiator grapple bar. Bresnik completed prep work for one of two spare pump modules on separate stowage platforms to enable easier access for potential robotic replacement tasks in the future. He nearly finished prep work on the second, but that work will be completed by future spacewalkers.

This was the fifth spacewalk of Bresnik’s career (32 hours total spacewalking) and the third for Acaba (19 hours and 46 minutes total spacewalking). Space station crew members have conducted 205 spacewalks in support of assembly and maintenance of the orbiting laboratory. Spacewalkers have now spent a total of 53 days, 6 hours and 25 minutes working outside the station.

You really should take a couple of minutes and check the footage out. Keep in mind, during the clip, they're flying at about 17.500 miles per hour! 




はじめまして: We continue to plug away at learning a little Japanese via Mango Language. We started a new lesson today, all about names and introductions.

I have to say, the kids are doing so much better than me in this endeavor. CJ, especially, seems to pick it up (and have it stick) so quickly. Me, notsomuch. I am going to need a LOT more practice time to keep up with them.

BTW, the characters at the start of this section spell out how to say 'nice to meet you' in Japanese.

SOUNDS OF THE SEASON: So, we were trying to find some Christmas music to listen to while making some holiday decorations, but couldn't find a suitable option. It was one horrible cover after another. I grew frustrated with our cable provider's search options for "music," and basically gave up on the holiday music after about 10 fruitless minutes. 

Eventually, non holiday music offerings populated the screen. I quickly opted for a musical documentary instead. Specifically, AC/DC - Dirty Deeds.

It was really quite informative and entertaining, and more culturally enriching than hearing "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" for the 4,923rd time.

Innovations

BOXING: Since September, Annabelle has been involved with a FIRST® LEGO® League  team that meets at The Museum of Flight each Saturday.

The program includes robotics challenges, among other things, and the theme this year is  HYDRO DYNAMICSSM.  As part of the competition, per the organization's website, the groups have to "choose and solve a real-world problem in the Project. They will also build, test, and program an autonomous robot using LEGO® MINDSTORMS®technology to solve a set of missions in the Robot Game. Throughout their experience, teams will operate under the FIRST LEGO League signature set of Core Values, celebrating discovery, teamwork, and Gracious Professionalism®."

For their attempt at helping solve the problem of water waste, the team has come up with a prototype for a monthly subscription box, the AquaBox. Subscription boxes are kind of a thing right now, and so they thought having a monthly box featuring a water saving product would be a fun idea.

Annabelle and friends decided the first box would include a DROP-A Brick product. It's something you put in your toilet tank to reduce the amount of water used with each flush. It also includes a tablet to help you detect water leaks in your toilet.

I think their boxes are cute and compelling!

It will be fun watching them present their project to judges in the coming weeks. Also, if you want an AquaBox, let Annabelle know and she can hook you up. :) 

INVENTIVE: CJ spends a lot of time reading, and a lot of it online. I try to encourage him to get off screen more often, and so this weekend I handed him a Time magazine and asked him to read the cover story and then pick a couple of things from it to write about. 

Here's what he came up with. ... 

In the latest issue of Time Magazine, there is an article titled "The 25 Best Inventions of 2017". I picked two of them to write about, which are as follows:

In the "For the Future" section of the article, there is the Tesla Model 3, a car which is designed to bring electric automobiles into the mainstream. The Model 3 can go over 200 miles on a single charge. The car is very popular, apparently getting over 1800 orders every day, and regularly selling out. The article mentions that the Model 3 and its future successors are likely to be important in the fight against anthropogenic climate change.

Meanwhile, in the "For Play" section, there is the Nintendo Switch. The Switch is the latest console from Nintendo, a prominent video game console maker. The Switch functions as both a home and portable console, having a main unit (plugged into a dock at home, and carried by itself on the go). The Switch has been a commercial and critical success.

You can read the article here: http://time.com/5023212/best-inventions-of-2017/