Entries tagged with imperial

Current Music: combichrist - this sh*t will f*ck you up
Crossposts: https://nanila.livejournal.com/1201291.html

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Day 192/365: Hashtag Not All Men

Four Imperial College physicists were awarded medals by the Institute of Physics recently. You can read about it in full here. Below are the quotes from the prize winners. The emphasis is mine.

Prof Dougherty, winner of the Richard Glazebrook Medal and Prize, also my Big Boss: "It is a great privilege to be given this award for essentially doing my job, none of which would have been possible without the great people I have worked with over the years."

Prof Sutton, winner of the David Tabor Medal and Prize: "I am delighted to receive the Tabor medal and prize from the IOP. David Tabor was a giant in the physics of surfaces and interfaces and it is a great honour for me to receive this award."

Prof Stevens, winner of the Rosalind Franklin Medal and Prize: "This award recognises the hard work of my fantastic team of postdocs and students and the terrific contributions that they have made to new platforms of designer materials for biomedical applications."

Dr Wade, winner of the Daphne Jackson Medal and Prize: "This isn’t really a prize for me, but a prize for Imperial - I’ve grown up at Imperial, fallen in love with physics at Imperial and realised the importance of sharing my enthusiasm with others at Imperial.

"I have been privileged to be involved with Imperial’s public engagement activities both on and off campus - the incredible festival, the schools workshops and the awesome work of Priya and the White City team - and can safely say they’ve inspired me to keep speaking about science even when I’m outside the lab."

Three women. One man. No prizes for guessing which one of these statements came from the dude.

If anyone wants to sit with me and my sardonic expression, quietly being disappointed but not surprised, you're most welcome.

Current Mood: stressed
Crossposts: https://nanila.livejournal.com/1134604.html

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Space news: Cassini and JUICE

Hear ye, hear ye: on the evening of Tuesday 10 October, you can come to Imperial College London and meet some Cassini scientists and engineers. Well, OK, one engineer (that would be me). Imperial are hosting a Fringe event titled “A Space Odyssey” in celebration of the Cassini end of mission, and there are lots of things to see, including me reminiscing about Cassini operations whilst waving around tiny magnetometers, and do, including making your own thin film paper spacecraft. Read all about what's on offer here.

Book yourself a free ticket here.

If you come along, you can see this beauty without all the reflective glare:

Image of the 1/25 scale Cassini model in its newly procured perspex box for display at the Fringe.

In other space news, ESA have conducted a helicopter test on the radar boom that will be on the JUICE spacecraft, to ensure that it will be able to penetrate Ganymede’s ice crust. You can read about, and watch a video of, the tests here. (Synopsis: Big Metal Box and Poles get waved over fields in Germany, serious-faced blokes on the ground don’t seem to find anything funny about this, pfft.)

Current Mood: excited, ungrammatical
Crossposts: http://nanila.livejournal.com/981795.html

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Solar System Exploration: Still Happening, Is Going To Happen More

The last of the press releases I was waiting for to make Announcements About Space came out yesterday so I can now write my Post of Great Happiness.

The European Space Agency's Cluster mission, studying the Earth's plasma environment and interaction with the heliosphere, has been extended from 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2016. This is the mission's seventh extension - the original mission began at the start of 2001 and was scheduled to last for two years. It is both astonishing and wonderful that all four spacecraft have lasted this long and continue to return such a rich seam of results. The quartet of spacecraft, flying in a tetrahedral formation, have gradually been approaching closer and closer to Earth, exploring different regions of the magnetosphere. It will be years, probably decades, before the potential of the data can be said to have been mined exhaustively.

The instrument I work on (the magnetometer) is fully operational on all four spacecraft. A couple of years ago, I calculated that I'd personally inspected tens of millions of magnetic field vectors. I suspect that number may have since entered the hundreds of millions.
Support for the European instruments aboard the joint NASA-ESA Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn has been approved by ESA's Science Programme Committee. Cassini is scheduled to take its final plunge into Saturn's atmosphere in late 2017. The magnetometer (our instrument) is still going strong.
Other missions that I don't work on personally, but know people who do, also had two-year extensions approved: INTEGRAL, Mars Express, PROBA-2, SOHO, XMM-Newton, Hinode and HST. So many different types of exciting science!

Also, holy long-lasting spacecraft, Batman. Cluster is far from the most venerable. SOHO was launched in 1995 and went into operation, observing the Sun, in 1996. The Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990. 1990. I hadn't the faintest inkling that I would end up becoming a scientist in 1990. /o\
Finally, the really big one. The JUICE mission to the Jupiter system, which will be the first spacecraft to orbit one of the Galilean moons (Ganymede), has been formally adopted by the agency. This means we are now allowed to leave the design phase, wherein our spacecraft and instruments exist only on paper (lots and LOTS of paper), and enter the implementation phase, wherein we begin to Build Things. I am both proud and excited to be a part of one of the instrument teams.

And now, I must go and rescue my pumpkin and pecan pies from beneath the noses of bloke and cat, for we are celebrating American Thanksgiving tomorrow.

Current Mood: reflective
Crossposts: http://nanila.livejournal.com/961877.html

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Lessons learned from "Catch A Comet" at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition

[Image from the Royal Society's Facebook page of me at the exhibit. The comet nucleus model with pockets containing molecular models is in front of me. The lander model is just visible in the middle in the background. I look knackered. This is because when this photo was taken, I had just begun my fourth 4-hour shift on the stand in three days, after handling delivery and supervising setup the previous weekend.]

I'm still recovering from the exhibition despite finishing my last shift on the stand at mid-afternoon on Thursday. The exhibit finished on Sunday at 1800, after which it was packed down and shipped back to the Open University in Milton Keynes.

StarkeyStardust and I almost single-handedly designed the stand, commissioned the interactive elements of the exhibit, weaseled the giveaways from ESA (thanks to Project Scientist

mggttaylor), rounded up volunteers, organised the rota and arranged for delivery, setup and breakdown of the exhibit. Our nominal superiors got us the funding (which was helpful and not to be sneezed at). But most of the last five months' worth of work has been done exclusively by the two of us, in addition to our usual full-time jobs.

I learned some things about myself over the course of the organisation, which I felt the need to record.

I'm not a natural media person. I can come across okay if I make an effort, but I don't enjoy it the way StarkeyStardust does. She is a natural, relaxed and effective communicator. Granted, she's had more media training than I have, but she also has a talent for it that I don't. She took on nearly all the press obligations during the exhibition. Beforehand, I thought I might have wanted to share the limelight, but as it turns out, I much prefer being a power behind the throne, as it were, rather than sitting on it myself. In Yes Minister terms, I'm probably a bit of a Bernard at the moment, with aspirations to become a Dorothy.
The more volunteers, the better. We were told we would need at least four people on the stand at all times. I did most of the organisation of the rota which is a much more time-consuming task than most people estimate. I knew from previous experience (I've either helped design or volunteered at the RSSE since 2011) that ideally we would have at least six people on the stand at all times, but I should have recruited harder as there were times when we had only four scheduled and that really is the bare minimum. Especially when someone drops out, as a few people nearly always do. In the end we had 42 volunteers, five of whom had to drop their sessions. Also, I should not have put StarkeyStardust officially on the stand as much as she wanted me to. Four sessions over the course of the week really should be the maximum amount anyone does. Everyone underestimates how draining it is being on your feet talking and being enthusiastic for four hours straight.

The exhibition keeps running for longer every year as well (it used to open on a Monday and close on a Thursday). If I were to do it again, I would ensure I had at least 50 volunteers and that none of them were officially scheduled for more than four sessions. As it was I was worried because we had a few that I never even met because they didn't come to the dry run and they were scheduled at the weekend when I wasn't there. I know now that as long as they confirm they're coming, it isn't a problem.
Do not try to stuff too many things into the exhibit space. I knew this one already which is why we only had two interactives, and was worried about how huge the lander model is. Its footprint is 1.5 metres by 1.5 metres and our space was 4 metres by 2 metres. Funnily enough this wasn't our biggest problem; it was the bases for the backdrop, which we hadn't realised were stupidly bulky, totalled 5 metres in length and were mostly useless. We ended up having to get rid of half of the backdrop in order to fit everything in and make it look decent.
Small items that are part of the interactives will get nicked no matter how vigilant you think you're being. A few of our molecular models went walkabout, and our "comet without nucleus" magnet and replacement "comet without nucleus" magnet (a London bus fridge magnet with a cartoon drawing stuck to it, see here, were both spirited away.
Be prepared for people to drop out of the soirees. This, I admit, was something we didn't anticipate. Most people love going to the Royal Society soirees and will angle for an invite. Both people who dropped out of the soirees (one each on Wednesday and Thursday night) did so on very short notice - mid-day on the day of the soiree. We managed to scare up replacements, but I think next time it would be clever to ask a postgrad volunteer who has put in a lot of sessions to be a backup attendee for an "important" guest at each of the soirees. They were the ones who ended up getting the places anyway, and they deserved them.
Chase up the university press office for publicity. Both Imperial and the OU let us down a bit on that front, I have to admit. We got a bit of coverage, but not really enough before the actual event to build interest.
Focus on only one social media outlet, or recruit volunteers to generate content. We tried to run a Tumblr and a Twitter just between the two of us before the exhibition. That was a mistake - we just about managed the Twitter account but couldn't keep up the Tumblr. Then, during the Twitter Q&A the week before the exhibition, we gave the Twitter account password to a few more people and suddenly it became way, way easier to maintain. I know this is a basic lesson of social media networking, but I've never really tried to do it myself as my accounts have always been exclusively personal.

And finally...
Don't get pregnant during the run-up to the exhibition. Fighting nausea whilst trying to work an extra two hours every day after your normal work is done and you've put the baby to bed and all you want to do is go to sleep? Yeah, that sucks.

To make myself feel better, here are the things I think we did well.

Communicate regularly but not overwhelmingly with our volunteers. We tried to put a good deal of useful information into our group e-mails and send them sparingly. Also, we thanked them promptly after the exhibition even though none of us even wanted to think about it on Monday, which I think was good form.
Pay people to do the stand design properly. Neither of us had the time or the necessary expertise to do it ourselves. It was much better to commission artists to make the comet nucleus model and the mechanical workshop at Imperial to make the Pin the Tail on the Comet interactive.
Don't reinvent the wheel. For instance, I knew that purplecthulhu had helped design the Herschel and Planck stands at previous RSSEs, and so I asked him where to get shirts printed and for permission to reuse their rota spreadsheet. He provided these and many more helpful tips. (He definitely earned his soiree place!) Natalie knew that the backdrop for the Stardust exhibit some years ago had been stored at the OU, so she tracked that down and had the same person who did the design for the posters reuse his template for the Catch A Comet exhibit.
Communicate enthusiastically and effectively with the public about SCIENCE. This is the whole point of the exhibition, and I think we managed it well in the end.

Current Mood: proud
Crossposts: http://nanila.livejournal.com/937573.html

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FOR SCIENCE! Cassini MAG team wins RAS group achievement award

A long and difficult week is ending on a positive note!

The Royal Astronomical Society has awarded the Cassini Magnetometer (MAG) team a Group Achievement Award in geophysics.

From the awards announcement:

The Magnetometer has been one of the most successful instruments aboard the spacecraft, continuously returning data about the fields in the peri-kronian environment, through the ringed planet’s bow shock and magnetopause and deep inside its magnetosphere. One of the key findings of Cassini – and one of the most unexpected and scientifically challenging – was that the small, icy moon Enceladus is pouring a jet of water into Saturn’s magnetosphere. This finding is a direct result of the efforts of the Magnetometer Team and its Principal Investigator, Professor Michele Dougherty.

From Prof. Dougherty* on the Imperial web site news item:

I am very honoured that the Cassini magnetometer team has been recognised by the RAS in this way. It is been an extremely rich and rewarding experience to work closely with such a fantastic group of scientists and engineers** from the magnetometer team, other Cassini instrument teams and the Cassini Project. I look forward to continuing the very fruitful collaboration we’ve all had in the remaining 4-years of the mission at Saturn.

* That's my boss!
** That's me! \o/

Crossposts: http://nanila.livejournal.com/929598.html

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Successful launch!

The Cinema-2 and Cinema-3 satellites - also designated KHUSAT-1 and KHUSAT-2, for Kyung Hee University - have successfully launched and are in low Earth orbit!

See here for more detail. Excerpted:

KHUSAT-1 and 2, also designated CINEMA-2 and 3 respectively, are South Korea’s contribution to the international CubeSat for Ion, Neutral, Electron, Magnetic fields, or CINEMA, programme. Developed by Korea’s Kyung Hee University, the satellites carry magnetometers produced by Imperial College London, in the United Kingdom.
...
Three-unit CubeSats with masses of four kilograms (8.8 lb), the two KHUSATs carry two instruments; the Magnetometer from Imperial College (MAGIC) is used to characterise the Earth’s magnetic field in the satellite’s vicinity, while the Suprathermal Electrons, Ions and Neutrals (STEIN) experiment will detect energetic particles around the spacecraft.

We hope to hear more about the spacecrafts' status, and of course our magnetometers, soon. Now, fingers re-crossed for the successful launch of the SWARM mission tomorrow.

ETA: Article on the Beeb about the deployment here.

Current Mood: excited
Crossposts: http://nanila.livejournal.com/929046.html

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The joy of tiiiiiiny satellites

(Writing credit shared with

flexagain.)

This is the week of satellite launches! The most high profile was NASA's MAVEN launch. MAVEN is now on a 10-month journey to Mars, where it will study the Martian atmosphere and its interaction with the solar wind. However, it’s worth noting that no less than sixty-four (64) small satellites are due to be launched this week.

The ISS should be deploying four (4) of them yesterday and today, using the Japanese Experiment Module’s Small Satellite Orbital Deployer (JEM, J-SSOD), as has been used successfully before.

Twenty eight (28) will be launched on a Minotaur 1 today part of the US’s Educational Launch of Nano-satellites (which CINEMA-1 was part of), and which has 7 P-PODs*.

Thirty two (32) will be launched on the Dnepr on Thursday including CINEMA-2 and 3, mounted on a complicated assortment of launch systems. There are nine ISIPODs (including 6 3U satellites, of which two are CINEMAs!), three X-PODs, two PEPPODs, a few standalone primary and secondary payloads, and Unisat-5, which will deploy a satellite which will itself then deploy another satellite! (a veritable Russian Doll of spacecraft).

Supposedly the Dnepr launch will be shown live on the following South African website. We presume one of the spacecraft is from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, whose website this is: http://live.cput.ac.za/live.html.

Here in the lab, we’re excited about all this not least because we built the tiny magnetoresistive magnetometers, called MAGIC, that are aboard the CINEMA-2 and -3 CubeSat spacecraft. We received data from the MAGIC unit on the CINEMA-1 spacecraft, which brought the new sensor to TRL 9**, and we’re keen to see the feat repeated.

* P-POD stands for Poly-PicoSatellite Orbital Deployer. They are the delivery capsule for CubeSats, since each CubeSat is 10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm. Each P-POD can hold three single-unit CubeSats. Or, in the case of CubeSats like CINEMA, one three-unit CubeSat (30 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm). The other PODs are similar satellite deployment devices.

** TRL 9 is the highest level of technology readiness: demonstrating that your instrument works in-flight.

Crossposts: http://nanila.livejournal.com/912044.html

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Iron Man 3, JUICE...and more baby photos

Last week was my first plunge back into my normal working schedule - two days in London, three working from home. My work colleagues welcomed me back to London by taking me to see Iron Man 3. Do you think they know me? I think they know me. I missed them. ♥

So let me tell you about my favourite line in the entire film, which I'm fairly certain wasn't anyone else's. ( Spoiler )

~*~

Work on the Phase A development of the science payload for the Jupiter mission to JUICE is ramping up. You can find brief definitions of the instruments and their objectives here. The blurb for our instrument, J-MAG:

"A magnetometer to characterise the Jovian magnetic field, its interaction with the internal magnetic field of Ganymede, and to study subsurface oceans of the icy moons. The instrument will use fluxgates (inbound and outbound) sensors mounted on a boom."

~*~

And now for more photos of Baby Chewing On Things. She's teething. Thank goodness she's a good-tempered child because otherwise I think we'd probably be treated to endless screaming right now.

Image of Humuhumu in white button-down shirt and blue trackie bottoms, playing an invisible harmonica.

( +5 )

Crossposts: http://nanila.livejournal.com/910971.html

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First day at nursery, first day back at work, Viennese shop windows

First day at nursery

[Image of Humuhumu in khaki trousers and a stripey jumper, being held by a pretty blonde nursery staff member in a red t-shirt.]

On her first day at nursery, Humuhumu had a fabulous time. She’s quite sociable, plays on her own for long stretches of time and will happily eat most things. The big culinary discovery this week was custard. I think she’s wondering why we’d never given it to her previously. She’s even managed to pick up a new trick over the course of her first three days. She now knows how to throw a toy out of her reach and then wait for us to pick it up. It is even more tedious than I had previously imagined.

On Humuhumu’s first day at nursery, her mummy went to the campus cafe to hide behind dark glasses and a large cappucino and pretend not to be crying. She did manage to do a bit of work and to have a long walk, but she went to pick up Humuhumu fifteen minutes early because she couldn’t stand it any longer.

First day at work

[Image of me with shiny salon hair and dark sunglasses in front of the Floozie in the Jacuzzi, central Birmingham.]

My first day back at work was last Friday. On Thursday, I got my first non-self-inflicted haircut in 18 months, pictured above. On Friday, I got up at 5:30 am to breastfeed Humuhumu and was out the door by 6. I ended up missing the 18:15 on the way back and had to take a later, slower train, so I didn’t get home until 10 pm. However, I had good briefings with colleagues and a tasty pub lunch and I moved my desk to a new office.

Additionally, I took part in the following exchange.

Me, re an ex-colleague: He’s gone to work on software interfaces for a Russian moon lander.
Labmate: In Soviet Russia, moon lands on you!

This is why I missed my work.

Viennese shop windows

I've been going through the photos I took in Vienna and these made a little series.

Image of a little stone angel with her tilted head resting on her hands.

( +3 )

And in conclusion, BABY.

[Image of a shirtless Humuhumu laughing at her daddy, reflected in the mirror of the wardrobe behind her.]

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Humuhumu's Week of Geek Chic Day 4: n00b

[Image: My daughter in a new black ThinkGeek onesie with "n00b" printed on the front.]

Yesterday was Humuhumu's first big adventure. We went to London on the train and then to my work. She & the bloke then wandered off to the museums while I worked frantically for about three hours. Well, I say the museums. I found them in the pub, so I rather suspect much of the time was spent having lunch with the bloke's friend and charming the bar staff with her big-eyed wonder at the bright lights of the big city.

It was our first time changing her nappy in public, too. I was happy to discover that Marylebone station, in addition to being beautiful, has nice unisex changing facilities so the bloke & I could take our time fumbling around with the change bag.

She was quietly curious, feeding or sleeping for 90% of the trip. The one exception was the bus. Bus journeys with an infant in a pram are a bad idea. Even if the bus isn't rammed, you can't remove the baby from the pram while you're on it - it lurches around too much. Humuhumu is accustomed to being picked up when she cries, which was possible on the train because we had time to get settled in and put the pram away before the train started moving. It wasn't possible on the bus, and the betrayed looks she was giving me as she voiced her disapproval at being left strapped in were as painful to me as the oppressive weight of other passenger's judgment. (I'd forgotten how many miserable gits there are in London.) Future bus journeys, I conclude, will be made with her in her sling. Train journeys, on the other hand, are a golden opportunity for her to make the commuters go all gooey, even large and forbidding-looking gentlemen in suits.

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“Curiosity: The Next Mars Rover” - RAeS lecture notes

Since Curiosity is soon to make its necessarily complicated landing on the surface of Mars, I thought I’d share the lecture notes I made when I went with three of my work colleagues to the Royal Aeronautical Society (not to be confused with the Royal Astronomical Society) in London a couple of weeks ago. The lecture was given by Matt Wallace, Lead Systems Engineer for Curiosity at NASA-JPL. It was therefore tech-focused rather than science-focused. I imagine this is mostly information that can be found in various places on the interwebs, but it was fun hearing it put together from the engineering perspective. I enjoyed the lecture immensely.

He began briefly reminding us that rover-based exploration of Mars is pretty modern. 1997 saw the landing of Sojourner, which lasted for 90 days and carried about 5 lbs of science instrumentation. 2003 saw the landings of Spirit and Opportunity, which carried about 11 lbs. Curiosity is a big step forward, carrying 185 lbs of science instrumentation and weighing about a ton. Opportunity saw sedimentary rock near its landing crater, which indicated that surface water must have been on Mars. It’s hoped that Curiosity will be able to measure whether or not another key ingredient for the evolution of life as we know it, carbon, is present in sufficient quantities to have potentially existed on Mars.

Curiosity will land on the surface of Mars on 6 August 2012. It lies flat in its 4.5 metre diameter entry capsule, which looks a bit like it might contain an oversized Pokemon. Or a Mini Cooper. (A photo of the entry capsule sitting over a Mini Cooper may have been shown.) The landing process looks straightforward at first. The cruise stage releases the capsule, spinning at 2 rev/minute. The entry capsule, doing 17000 miles per hour during descent, deploys its parachute after firing thrusters to correct its trajectory. It splits in half and lets the bottom shell drift away as it slows to 200 miles per hour. Then the top half of the shell detaches to allow the descent stage and rover to slow to 2 miles per hour.

Now comes the weird bit. The descent stage - the SkyCrane - lowers the rover on a bridle (which is controlled by the rover) and ever so gently releases it onto the surface of Mars. It then expends its remaining fuel and flies off and crashes 150 to 200 metres away from the rover. [The animation linked below makes it look like it lands miles away, for some reason!] The SkyCrane is the really unique piece of kit involved in Curiosity. Such a large, heavy rover needed a very controlled delivery mechanism. The Doppler accuracy on the descent stage has to be accurate to within a few metres when it and the rover are still 11 km above the planet’s surface.

Mr Wallace showed several interesting touchdown testing clips on both rough and smooth terrain, as well as the deployment testing in a wind tunnel of the disk-gap band parachute. The parachute is the biggest of these NASA has built - capable of withstanding 6000 lbs of impulse. It was also field-tested with an F-18. Curiosity has 17 cameras. Some are for practical purposes, like hazard avoidance, and others for science.

Curiosity will not be all that much faster than Spirit and Opportunity. It will travel up to 6 cm/s (less than 0.1 mph), meaning it can go about 100 metres a day. However, it has one major advantage over them because it’s nuclear rather than solar powered. It uses radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs). This is unusual for a non-outer-planetary mission, but it was deemed necessary to achieve the science objectives of the rover. It means it can be operational whenever it likes, instead of being restricted by its battery capacity and view of the Sun.

Thermal testing was pretty extreme. The 25-foot test chamber was raised to daytime temperatures (+20 degrees Celsius), then pumped out and flooded with liquid nitrogen to simulate night conditions (-130 degrees Celsius). Curiosity will be subjected to this thermal cycle on a daily basis, so the electronics needed to be very robust.

The landing site is at the base of Mount Sharp, near what looks like alluvial flow. The site combines a crater with a mountain in the middle of it, where the crater had filled in with sedimentary material that subsequently eroded away. All this makes it quite a rich science target. Curiosity will spend its two-year prime mission traversing up the lower slopes. The landing ellipse (19 km by 7 km) is much reduced from what Spirit and Opportunity had, since it’s quite a hazardous location.

Landing will be completely autonomous, as the landing phase takes 7 minutes, while communication time from Earth to Mars is about 13 minutes. That will be fun for the mission engineers after waiting through Curiosity’s eight-month journey.

Here’s hoping all goes well on 6 August!

JPL’s animation of descent and landing (first 4 minutes), and rover operations. Curiosity pootles along the edge of the crater, checks out several different rocks until it finds one that’s interesting enough to “taste” and then samples it. YouTube video, 11:20, no narration.

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Working from home: Telstar v Nanila

I'm working from home today. This is what I have done so far.

Seen off the bloke on his weekly commute to Brum at an early hour.
Sent e-mails and cleaned out my inbox of all urgent matters.
Done two loads of washing.
Done the daily ops checks for the Cassini magnetometer.
Done the weekly housekeeping checks for the Cassini magnetometer.
Updated an archiving spreadsheet for Cassini magnetometer data.
Calibrated Cluster magnetometer data.

Here is what Telstar has done today.

Gone outside for two minutes to ascertain that it is, indeed, grey and wet there.
Begged for and obtained gooshy food.
Lain down in the exact centre of the bed.
Changed positions approximately twice in the ensuing four hours.

Someone remind me which of us is the intelligent one, here?

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Oh, you've got blue eyes

I'm sure my obsession with vintage-izing everything will pass at some point. Just not while it's helping me to stick to this project.

After

miss_s_b posted hers, I had a look through the last five years' of entries made on or as near as possible to 15 May. I found it made for a fairly typical cross-section of my favourite journalling topics.

On 12 May 2007, I stood in the library of the Royal Geological Society after several glasses of wine and, er, shouted a random sweary thing. (This was a very confusing time in my life in many ways.)

On 15 May 2008, I recorded spectrograms of my voice while looking for a simple way for my first-year physics project students to record signals from their VLF receiver.

On 15 May 2009, I went to a whisky tasting at the Whisky Exchange with

imyril and her boy. I went home clutching a bottle of 18 year old Hakushu.

On 16 May 2010, I was in Noordwijk, Holland, attending a science conference about the nascent NASA/ESA mission to Jupiter.

On 15 May 2011, I wrapped up my participation in the 3W4DW (Three Weeks for Dreamwidth) festival, which didn't really take off this year outside fandom, sadly. Especially since it was the way I met a lot of my non-fandom Circle.

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This would appear to be the week of Big News.

First, the JUICE mission to Jupiter and its Galilean moons, which our group has been working on for ages, has been recommended by ESA to win the first launch in the Cosmic Vision programme. This is the BBC article about it. Please note that this is not the same as full approval - the member states of ESA have to vote on 2 May to select it over the other two proposed missions. But it is seen as "rather unlikely" that the member states will vote against the Space Science Advisory Committee's recommendation.

And second, my boss has been made a Fellow of the Royal Society. Professor Michele Dougherty, FRS. In your face, persons who claim women can't be great scientists.

Current Mood: emotional
Current Music: penguincam at San Diego SeaWorld

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I Controls the Spacecraft.

I had one of those "Wow, I did that!" moments today.

My manager sent round a link to a beta version of a tool on the NASA-JPL web site called Eyes on the Solar System which, among other things, lets you visualize the movement of a spacecraft as it orbits a planet. Of course, I had to have a look at a Cassini manoeuvre. I picked one of the first calibration rolls that I ever designed, which took place on 4 December 2008.

Watching it made me go a bit teary-eyed. I helped make that happen, on a spacecraft orbiting a planet over a billion kilometres away. Wow.

Watch it here. The roll period starts at about 4 AM.

Current Mood: share & enjoy

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Bring out your bad vectors; throw 'em on the cart.

Our group has a meeting every week in which two people, a member of Space and a member of Atmos, give talks. It was my turn to speak for Space last week. I talked about new issues in magnetometer calibration, which is exactly as thrilling as it sounds. So I attempted to spice things up with photos, like this one.

[Two chaps and two ladies point sternly at a box labeled "Bad Vectors".]

You see, when we find bad data, we like to make sure that nobody tries to do science with it. We collect up the corrupted vectors and put them in the Bad Vectors box. The chap on the far left, who is extra keen, seals up the box so that none of them can escape.

This is exactly how it works. Let no one tell you otherwise.

We also have special musical accompaniment, which includes such fine titles as "Calibration" by Carr & the Gang. We even won an award for our efforts, as shown below.

[A badly Photoshopped image of Kool & the Gang. This was on my title slide, which took far longer for me to make than any of the actual content.]

If we ever actually win an award for calibration, which is highly unlikely, I intend to insist that we recreate this photo. I think we all look quite dapper.

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How I spend my lunch breaks.

One of my work colleagues, whom I'll call Lab Mate 1 (LM1) decided to insert a probability puzzle into our lunchtime conversation earlier this week.

LM1: "Hey, have you guys heard of the Monty Hall problem?"

We shook our heads. LM1 then explained the Monty Hall problem to us, which runs like this (excerpt blatantly stolen from Wikipedia):

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1 [but the door is not opened], and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?

Me: "Wait, what if you want to keep the goat? Can you do that?"
LM2: "Yes, what is market value for a goat? Cars depreciate really quickly. I bet goats don't."
LM3: "And what if you already have a car, but you happen to have an overgrown lawn? Then you'd want a goat."

LM1 looked at us in despair. "I don't feel you all are entering into the spirit of this game."

Current Mood: you are getting verrry sleeepy
Current Music: Sesame Street: Martians Meet A Clock

Entry tags:

The Pendulum Experiment: Be a citizen scientist

Physics needs your help. Yes, yours, my friends!

A very nice chap called Jony here at Imperial College is doing a simple yet elegant statistical experiment. He would appreciate it if you would visit the web page linked below and watch the lovely blue pendulum. All you have to do is click the Start/Stop button to time a single swing of the pendulum, and you will have helped. At the default swing time setting, this takes all of four seconds. Only four seconds, that's it. And you will have performed SCIENCE. If you have more than four seconds to spare and you enjoy tinkering with your SCIENCE, you can fiddle with the controls under the timer to make the pendulum go faster or slower and higher or lower.

Please do your part to enable physics today!

The Pendulum Experiment

If you enjoy your Pendulum Experience, please feel free to pass it along via the medium of DW or LJ or Twitter or Facecakes or G+ or Tumblr, etc. Jony needs lots and lots of data for best experimental results.

With apologies to friends who have already been asked to participate via the medium of

capslock_dreamwidth and/or the many other places I've posted this link today.

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So glad we did Space crafts

Remember the Year 6 students I ran an outreach workshop with a couple of weeks ago?

Last week, I posted the lithographs of Saturn images taken by Cassini to the class, care of IntoUniversity Haringey. Yesterday, I found a big envelope sitting on my chair at work. This is what it contained.

[Image of my big orange thank-you card, with lovingly hand-coloured rocket]

I love that I'm inside the rocket. I love that the rocket is rainbow-coloured. I love that they designed their own logo. In fact, there's nothing that I don't love about this card.

( Inside & back cover )

It tickles me that the stars are stars of David. Also that the second rocket looks like the product of an unholy alliance between a traffic signal and a billiard rack.

I got a bit emotional when I opened it, I must admit. I do hope this experience will help them to retain a positive impression of science and engineering in the face of the impending and inevitable adverse influences.

Entry tags:

imperial,
outreach

Let us do Space crafts

Last week, I went to IntoUniversity’s centre in Haringey to talk to a group of Year 6 (age 10-11) students. The charity invites classes of children from both primary and secondary school to participate in week-long workshops about a particular academic subject. The schools are in traditionally deprived areas of London and most of the children have parents who didn’t attend university. The intent is to get them to consider studying at university as a possibility. The last time I did a talk for IntoUniversity was a few years ago in Lambeth, when they only had one centre. I’m pleased it’s expanded since then because it’s a brilliant idea.

My students were in the middle of a week dedicated to Engineering. I talked to them about spacecraft engineering and helped them with a workshop in which they had to construct a space station from foam blocks, egg cartons, polystyrene and crayons. The spacecraft had to be subjected to several tests: a strength test (support 2 kg of flour), an insulation test (keeping a cup of hot water warm), a volume test (inserting a foam brick into the centre of the craft) and a weight test (the lighter the structure, the more points scored). The winning craft came top of the first three categories by dint of employing an embedded structure (sweet container) to hold the cup of water. It could be lifted through the roof of the craft to allow the foam brick to be inserted. This also made it heavy, but they’d accumulated so many points already that they were going to win no matter what I decided. I had the “best aesthetics” vote. Fortunately for them, they’d made the most colourful and attractive spacecraft, so it was easy. You can see all four of the spacecraft below. The winning craft with its shark-fin solar sails is on the far left.

The education workers kindly compiled the students’ feedback and e-mailed it to me today. I reproduce the students’ comments verbatim, because they are adorable.

The best thing about this programme was...
When Dr nanila came because we did Space crafts
Dr nanila because we got to make space shuttles
When Dr nanila Cam because she taught us about moving to the Moon
Dr nanila’s visit because we learnt more about Space
Seeing Dr nanila because I’d never met her before
Dr nanila because she gave an enjoyable talk about the Moon
Getting to meet Dr nanila because I got to hear about going into Space
Making Moon shelters because we worked as a team
Dr nanila because she taught us a lot about the Moon
Meeting Dr nanila because she gave me a lot of information
Making Moon shelters because it was really fun
When I met Dr nanila because she is famous

I’m dying to know if “...we did Space crafts” was an intentional pun. I’m going to send them Cassini lithographs of Saturn as a thank-you.