Fly By

WAY OUT: Earlier this week, the kids and I learned about an opportunity to (virtually) hop on board NASA's New Horizons space probe for a ride and shout out to Ultima Thule, a distant Kuiper Belt object. It's out past Pluto!  You just go to this webpage and enter your name and message: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Send-Greetings/

Names need to be entered by December 21, 2018.

While looking at the mission website, we were reminded that New Horizons launched over 4700 days ago. Also, we learned that there is currently an Ultima Art Campaign (contest), open to students from kindergarten through 12th grade.

At the present, no one is quite sure what Ultima looks like. In July 2017, it passed in front of a star, and a few telescopes deployed by the New Horizons team in a remote part of Argentina caught its shadow, which provided some data to help the mission team plan the flyby and understand the size, shape, orbit, and environment around Ultima Thule. Using this data, scientists think Ultima could be a long single object, or perhaps two bodies orbiting very closely together. The object is believed to be no more than 20 miles (30 kilometers) long, or, if it is a binary object(s), each component is about 9–12 miles (15–20 kilometers) in diameter.

JPL is asking for "your best space artist rendition of what you think New Horizons will encounter" at Ultima Thule. They are open to submissions in any medium, it sounds like. The deadline for entry is December 27 via this website:
https://contest.sciartexchange.org/NASA-ultima-art-campaign/entry_form/

ROUND BALL: This week, one of our projects was making a cake for Birthday Dreams, a non profit that provides birthday parties to homeless children.  The child receiving our cake asked for a basketball themed party. It was our first go at a cake of this sort, so there were a couple of new challenges, including how to texture the fondant for the basketball (we wound up using a meat tenderizing mallet), and how to make the wood grained basketball court (we mixed white and light brown fondant, then painted over it with a gold wash).

We cut the kid's name and age out of a sugar sheet, using an ESPN-like font.

(His name is partially obscured in the photo for privacy reasons.)