Houston, we have check-in: Space 2.0 and the Curiosity landing

By Vanessa Hill, CSIRO

Social media is the new frontier for space exploration, shaping an age of innovative public participation in space missions.

While online communities are a-Twitter about NBC’s poor Olympic coverage, there’s also excitement for a broadcast of a different nature. This week we learned that NASA’s latest and greatest Mars rover, Curiosity, had secured arguably the greatest piece of media real estate to broadcast its landing: a big screen in New York’s Times Square.

Curiosity is set to land on the red planet on Monday afternoon, 3:31pm AEST, amid a flurry of tweets, posts and live-streaming action. Curiosity, officially named the Mars Science Laboratory, is set to solve the planetary puzzle of whether life once existed, or still does exist on Mars.

Before the Mars rover program was officially on our radars, baby boomers experienced Man’s first lunar steps by huddling around a black-and-white TV or wireless. As the technological and social landscapes have evolved, so has our experience of major events. How will we access and share information about the red planet in 2012 and beyond?

People are directly connecting and engaging with space missions through social media. For every NASA mission, there are Twitter accounts, Facebook pages and Google+ profiles to match.

Sure, profiles in the persona of a spacecraft are fun to follow, but do they have a greater impact on people than just appearing in their Twitter feed? If people connect with a spacecraft’s “personality” will they be more likely to engage with the science behind the mission?

Before the days of the interwebs, in 1977, the Voyager spacecraft launched with only a few hundred people watching. Some 35 years later, Voyager 1 and 2 can’t hide from online attention despite being at the very edges of our solar system. An animation (see above) showing Voyager travelling through space, bored, lonely and wishing it was closer to its home planet (until it runs into Dr Who, that is) was quick to rise to YouTube popularity.

In addition to being a cute animation, twin spacecraft Voyager 2 is on Twitter, updating us about its mission progress and answering our curly questions.

By personifying spacecraft in the form of social media accounts we’re characterising spacecraft in an easily accessible way which allows people to connect with specific missions. Imagine the buzz around the Voyager launch back in 1977 if those few hundred people were able to share their excitement like they can today.

In 2009 NASA began running “tweetups”, events during a mission launch designed for Twitter users to meet up in person and live tweet their experience to the world. Now rebranded as “NASA socials” to include Facebook users, more than 2,000 people have attended these events and broadcasted their experiences over the past few years.

For the Mars Curiosity launch tweetup last year, Will.i.am. (of Black Eyed Peas fame) came along to DJ the launch. Rarely do scientific endeavours attract celebrity endorsement or involvement.

For the large percentage of people that won’t get to see a rocket launch in person, there’s always the online space to experience the giant leaps for (tin)man kind. When the svelte humanoid robot Robonaut was turned on inside the International Space Station last year, he shared his first moment with the Twitterverse:

While this attracted a whole lot of robot love, tweeting from space is nothing new. In 2010 space station commander and astronaut Doug Wheelock checked in from space with foursquare (let’s be honest, foursquare was pretty 2010). He was awarded a “NASA Explorer” badge for his feat, much to the envy of many hardcore foursquare badge collectors.

Surely it can’t be long until the first check-in on Mars or until a Ustream broadcast of a rover experiment goes live (albeit with the 14 minute time delay necessary for the images to get back to Earth).

Curiosity is not shy of public attention and might just be the robot to check in from another planet. Curiosity Cam, the rover’s dedicated Ustream channel, has had almost 4.5 million views since the camera went live in the Jet Propulsion Lab cleanroom during the rover’s construction in 2010.

The number of viewers for Monday’s landing broadcast is sure to rival attention directed at the final Space Shuttle mission, STS-135. Here in Australia, we’re doing our bit to ease Curiosity through its “seven minutes of terror” (see video above) including atmospheric entry, descent and landing on the red planet.

While 900 kilograms of robot awesomeness speeds into the Martian atmosphere, the antennas at NASA’s Deep Space Network tracking station outside of Canberra will be listening. Officially called the Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex, these NASA-owned and CSIRO-operated dishes will have the only direct view of the landing. We are also bringing you our first Ustream broadcast, from the Martian festivities at the Landing Party.

So as the elaborate sky-crane lowers the Curiosity rover on to the Martian surface, what will you be doing? If you are too young to remember the Apollo 11 landing, charge your iDevices – this could be your Apollo moment.

Vanessa Hill does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
Read the original article.

After recently acquiring Adobe Creative Suite on my MacBook, this is the latest of my experiments in Photoshop.

I’m studying a Master of Science Communication at ANU, where this session I need to produce a small science communication artifact. My plan is for these experimentations to produce a series of designs that show canine force and movement, ‘Physics Pawed’.

Canine population control can be a humiliating reality for our four-legged friends. My 10 month old Labradoodle, Luna, was subject to the undignified process of having her reproductive organs removed. As a concerned and bemused dog owner, I fitted her ‘Elizabethan Collar’ on our return home.

Apart from a practical function, it’s an amusing representation of a satellite dish, or radio telescope. Glen Nagle, from Canberra’s Deep Space Network tracking station shared this sentiment and created the above image of Luna with a Voyager spacecraft.

If you want to follow a space dog that’s light years cuter than the Soviet pups, she tweets as @LunaLabradoodle.

Late last year, I submitted a video application to attend the 2012 International Aeronautical Congress. This 15 seconds of fame was recorded in the hope of joining the young plenary to flex my words on sociable science. Someone liked it.

So last week I submitted my round 2 application, which was a little more lenient in its three minute timeframe. While optimistic and thankful for my wonderful contributors, it will be another 6 weeks before I hear back.

For now I’m going to archive it with other video applications. There are memorable ones, like the failed application for the ‘Best Job in the World’ in 2008.  At least I can add the footage of me jumping off the roof of my parents house into their pool with ‘Vanessa’s Best Hits’.

I was more hopeful about the ABC3 kids TV presenter application in 2009. But I still haven’t heard back.

Perhaps the world is thankful that I’ve spent the last few years in video application hiatus.

Could I emerge victorious and head off to Naples in 2012? It’s in the hands of the world’s greatest astronomers and space scientists.

I’ve uploaded the video here for the enjoyment of the kind astronomers, space scientists and tweeps who contributed. Thank you! Some sound and image quality is quite poor, but I guess that comes with recording Skype conversations and not having an external microphone on my computer. Enjoy in small doses.

In 2012 I brought in the New Year underwater. In the first week of January I did a PADI Underwater Digital Photography course in Gili Trawangan, Indonesia. The course is a specialty course that brings my a step closer to being a Dive Master.

Here are a few of my aqua snaps on Flickr:

Behind every professional tweetup, there is a communicator who is a news junkie. As tweetup plans progress, their addiction spawns late nights of trawling through twitter profiles and reading over articles on Mashable.

They claim to ‘digg’ social media.

Really, they’re a professional stalker.

This person has a team of people they work with who only encourage their manic micro-blogging behaviours. They no longer function in normal social situations, as they increasingly find the back of their iPhone glued to their palm.

Occasionally, when writing a text message or a Facebook post they look for the magical ‘140’ character countdown on their screen. Oh, those other social media platforms.

Yes, @nessyhill’s real life evolved into communicating in headlines. Twitter Tycoon Takes Over The World. Or something like that.

My obsessive behaviour began after selection to attend a NASA Tweetup in September. Before that, all was fun and games. As I watched the GRAIL spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, it launched amongst a myriad of micro-blogging. Then I was hooked.

I flew back to Australia into a flutter of tweets. In the next four weeks, I would administer @CSIROnews whilst their head twit was on leave and begin to organise their first tweetup. I was tweeting above my average.

Balancing the 9-5 with the extracurricular tweeting was tough, not only due to a heavy workload but because I wanted to look at Hootsuite all the time. My streams were plentiful and the analytics were pretty.

My tweetup efforts were secondary to the fellow work-o-holic who organised the venue, speakers and managed a lot of press coverage. I took care of the tweets, tweeps and anything in-between. The enthusiasm of our 50 participants was encouraging.

I was now a stalking Queen. It was beneficial, enabling quick feedback on most of my communications. While we had a communications plan, it had a large “let’s play-it-by-ear” influence. Although there were some things of which I was certain; no tweeps couldn’t bring any friends and ‘I don’t like avacado’ wouldn’t lead to anaphylactic shock.

And suddenly it was tweetup time. My inner stalker flourished. Yes, I instantly knew the tweeps name, age and occupation by glancing at their Twitter handle. Or on first sight.

With a few last minute cancellations, the 47 tweeps were such a lovely group of people. They weren’t deterred by our rushed Sunday morning communications a week earlier about Mars Science Lab’s delayed launch date. They didn’t care that there weren’t enough seats in the cafeteria for us to all eat dinner at the same time. These end-of-the-world scenarios played out in my head were really unmemorable leading up to MSL’s launch. The tweeps were a variety of ages and occupations who were all connected by an interest in science and space exploration.

And as planned they tweeted with interest, excitement and detail that enabled the twittersphere to enjoy what our speakers, the Deep Space Network and CSIRO Discovery centre had to offer.

Now, every time I see tweeps interacting on Twitter, it makes me smile. In essence, our little tweetup had big ambitions. We’ve fostered an Aussie space community, many who have connected with other ‘space tweeps’ across the seas.

As for me, the 9 to 5 hasn’t been the same since I returned from the tweetup. My nails aren’t bitten and I’ve even had time to walk my dog.

I’ll have to organise another tweetup next year.

Last week I was fortunate enough to travel to Papua New Guinea on an astronomy and geology outreach tour. The majority of my work was on Lihir Island, New Ireland and I also traveled to Rabaul and Kokopo in East New Britain provence.

Working with kids who had little or no experience with a hands-on approach to science was very rewarding. Walking around an active volcano in Rabaul was fascinating and extremely hot. Scuba diving and snorkelling amongst pristine coral reefs and WWII wrecks was cool too.

As 2011 draws to a close, I can’t help but reminisce on an entry a NASA staffer scribbled in my journal in Florida in September, “Thanks you SO much for travelling so far to help spread the spirit of exploration. Keep exploring, just as we will!”

Happy Halloween! You know you spend too much time working when you think a pumpkin has similarities to Mars. It’s the second time I’ve ever carved a pumpkin, so this year I dedicated my jack-o-lantern to the next Mars rover, Curiosity. Fingers crossed it launches at its first opportunity, on Nov. 25, 2011.

You can find out more about Mars Science Lab and the Curiosity rover here 

How cute are these little entomologists? This week I’m working on Palm Island, North Queensland bringing the world of science to indigenous kids. The excitement has been manic! Today the were intrigued by the life of Insects; but theres more adventures in robotics, astronomy, electronics and lego to come…

Last Monday I had a pleasant surprise when a chrysalis hatched on my desk. Some people have paperweights. A colleague had given me the chrysalis a few months earlier and it was pushed behind many other distractions.

What emerged was Australia’s largest butterfly, a Cairns Birdwing (Ornithoptera euphorion), a species endemic to North Queensland. My new friend was a male, distinguished by the green markings on his wings.

As with most live animals in our office, the next week of butterfly rearing just proved I struggle as a mother. I gathered flowers and even made my own with fluorescent cardboard and diluted glucose syrup (as Google advised), however my butterfly lived for only a week- three weeks short of it’s average lifespan.

What’s quite admirable about the Cairns Birdwing is these guys (and their ladies) can mate for up to 48 hours of their 4 week lifespan. Butterflies just want to have fun.