NASA Spirit Mars Rover Wheel

NASA reported today, December 2, that the Mars rover “Spirit”has made significant discoveries while stuck in a section of the Martian terrain named after the ancient city of Troy.

Several of the wheels on the rover have been unable to gain traction, and have spun in place for the past six months as NASA operators attempt to unstick the device.  As the wheels churned up the soil, scientists were pleased to discover the presence of water-indicating sulfates, which form during steam events.

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Sweet picture of Saturn and Tethys above (one of Saturn’s moons).  Thanks to NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, we get to see amazing pictures like this one.  It almost looks fake, doesn’t it?  I never get tired of these NASA pictures of the day.  For more space pictures, follow NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Here are a couple other Saturn pictures from NASA, all courtesy of the Cassini probe.  The one on the bottom is a great shot of Saturn’s Titan. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Amazing periodic table. Each element has a video explaining it’s history, uses, characteristics, etc. – http://bit.ly/3fY40S
2. The humorous result of years of Intense Study and Engineering Experience http://bit.ly/1BJ8Yv
3. Twitter Lists for Nerds – engineering, science, technology, and even NASA! http://bit.ly/4jFNhI
4. Follow all the nasa twitter feeds in one list – http://bit.ly/4mIJ0z
5. My favorite engineering blog discussing innovations in rural Africa. – http://www.afrigadget.com/

Editors Pick

1. The Greatest Scientific Special of All Time: Absolute Zero, The Science of Cold. Watch it here – http://retwt.me/frCo

We send out all kinds of interesting/useful/cool tweets from our twitter account, Help4Engineers, and our readers have requested that we capture the best stuff in a blog post. So, starting this week, we’re going to do a blog post every Monday that is a recap of the most popular tweets from the previous week.

1. Astrophysicists rapping about the Universe (Sagan, Feynman, deGrasse Tyson, & Bill Nye). – http://bit.ly/8QWH2
2. New Scientist has an excellent article on how the brain makes sense of time. http://bit.ly/1160BX
3. Sixth sense let’s you interact with a pocket computer on any surface as though it’s a touchscreen. http://bit.ly/K8FEE
4. How DIY design gave a teenager from Malawi electricity, and can help transform Africa. http://bit.ly/1t8hI5 via @leleutd
5. NASA’s climate change website. Awesome info! http://bit.ly/mKkkE @andeanhealth

And my personal favorite from the week:

All engineers love nerf don’t they? Retro nerf bow and arrow tv commercial. http://bit.ly/2agJmy – via @andeanhealth