A Ticket to Explore: JPL opens the doors to the public this June

* Image property of Jet Propulsion Laboratory

We're happy to know that JPL is opening their doors to the public again this year!!!.  Although the dynamic has changed a little bit this time. This is because of the huge amount of people that has visited JPL during their special "Open House" events during previous years.

Meet King Kizer Best of Show in RoboGames 2012

King Kizer, one of the most famous humanoid combat robot of Japan and multiple times winner of competitions like ROBO-ONE and ROBO-ONE Grand Prix, visited the United States to participate in the ROBOGAMES last April, where it won three gold medals by competing in the Kung-Fu Middle Weight, Biped Race, and Best of Show events.

April 12, 1961 - The First Human Space Flight

**50th Aniversary of Human Space Flight Stamps issued by UN Postal Administration

A year ago, The United Nations declared April 12th as the International Day of Human Space Flight. This day intends to "reaffirm the important contribution of space science and technology in achieving sustainable development goals and increasing the well-being of States and peoples..."

The Night Sky During the Second Quarter of 2012

This is an update of the previous list showing some of the stars and planets that you can see in the night sky during the second quarter of 2012.

OLED The Future in Display Technology

*Samsung OLED TV

Probably two of the biggest announces during the CES 2012 were the Samsung and LG's OLED TVs. Although, both vendors offers different characteristics that make their products unique, they have one thing in common: both use OLED technology. But, what is OLED? Well, OLED stands for Organic Light Emitting Diode, and even though this technology isn't very new, it has become stronger during the last years, and used, mainly because of its costs, in devices such as phones and tablets.

Amateur Astronomy Resources

If you are an astronomy hobbyist, and your are looking for some resources and information that could help you. Here is a short list of useful links that I've found so far, I hope they'll will be helpful for you too.

ASIMO - The Next Generation

Recently, Honda has unveiled the new version of ASIMO. Although, it looks quite similar to the previous model, improvements in its mobility and control systems have been done. 

Mars Rovers: Curiosity

The Mars Science Laboratory, also known as MSL, is the more recent mission that has been sent to explore Mars. Like Pathfinder and MERS missions, the MSL consist in place a rover with a scientific load on the Mars surface aiming to find more information about the past and present environmental conditions, and based on this information try to understand if Mars were capable of supporting life in the past, and also, if there is any chance to be inhabited. Curiosity is expected to arrive in August 2012 and It's been planned that the mission last one Mars year (23 Earth months).

Mars Rovers: Oportunity And Spirit

The Mars Exploration Rover mission, also known as MERS, is the second mission sent to Mars that involved rovers. MERS aims to study Mars surface looking for clues about the past water activity on Mars. This information is vital to accomplish one of the goals of the mission: to find out whether life ever existed in Mars.

To do so, twin rovers, Opportunity and Spirit, were sent to different locations on opposite sides on Mars that were apparently affected by liquid water in the past, the Gusev Crater and Meridiani Planum.

Spirit was launched on June 10, 2003 and arrived to Mars on January 4, 2004, and Opportunity was launched on July 7, 2003 and arrived on January 25, 2004.

Mars Rovers: Sojourner

Sojourner was the first exploration rover sent to Mars. It was part of the Mars Pathfinder mission which consisted in sending to Mars a lander and rover. Sojouner traveled inside the lander, later named Carl Sagan Memorial Station, for almost seven moths arriving to the red planet's Aris Vallis region on July 4th, 1997.  The main goal of the Pathfinder mission was to demonstrate that it was possible to send a lander and a rover to another planet at a lower cost than previous missions. One day after the landing, on July 5th, the small rover was deployed, and made its first run on Mars soil.

OSHW Development Boards: Pinguino, Arduino, and Propeller Platform

Pinguino, Arduino and Propeller Platform are fully open source development boards that are available in the market. This is a brief summary about each one explaining their main characteristics trying to offer a simple guide for those who are looking for different options.

BeagleBoard, Get the Power of a PC in the Palm of Your Hand

Beagleboard is a small board, developed by some employees of Texas Instruments, that includes all the capabilities of a laptop in just 3x3 inches. The project aims to produce an inexpensive board that could be used to teach open source hardware and software. Although, Beagleboard doesn't include LCD, keyboard or Wi-Fi module, it has all the hardware necessary to host and control different kind of peripherals. The main reasons to design such a compact board are to reduce the costs, and allow developers to use their own peripherals and do what they want, for example, the USB port can be used to host a hub, so a keyboard, mouse, Bluetooth, cameras, or even a WI-FI connection can be added. The processor inside Beagleboard belongs to the OMAP3 family with ARM Cortex-8 CPU.

Mission Acomplished, Evolta completed the Ironman Triathlon

It’s been a long week, and Evolta's staff worked day and night helping the small robot to complete the course of the Ironman Triathlon. And they did it in time. 

My Keepon Will Hit the Stores This Fall

Keepon is a robot used to study children’s social behavior with an special focus on developmental disorders such as autism. The robot was design by Dr. Hideki Kozima, an expert in artificial intelligence and robotics, around 2003 while he was working at National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT).

Open Source Hardware

When we hear about the open source movement we only think of software, but what about hardware? Well, in the last few years a growing community has been working in applying the open source’s principles to hardware. In February 2011, the official Statement of Principles and Definition (version 1.0) of the Open Source Hardware (OSHW) was released. This definition states that “Open Source Hardware (OSHW) is a term for tangible artifacts – machines, devices, or other physical things – whose design has been released to the public in such a way that anyone can make, modify, distribute, and use those things.”

Microchip and Texas Instrument's Development kits for Android

Texas Instrument and Microchip offer two different options for those who are interested in developing electronic solutions based on Android OS.

Texas Instrument has launched the AM/DM37x Evaluation module which allows developers to start evaluating AM37x or DM37x processors. The evaluation module includes a DM3730 processor, 800-MHz DSP processor with IVA video accelerator, 256MB MDDR/512 MB NAND, onboard chip antenna, 3.7” LCD touch screen, Ethernet, Wireless, Bluetooth, USB ports, keyboard, and SD card reader. The kit also includes a universal power supply, and 4GB SD card.

Evolta’s Challenge 2011: The Hawaii Ironman Triathlon

Panasonic has recently announced the new challenge for its batteries’ mascot Evolta robot. This is the fourth challenge for the small robot. The first took place in 2008, when the robot climbed a 530-meters high cliff in Grand Canyon. In 2009, it ran the LeMans Circuit in France during 24 hours, and in 2010, it walked throughout the Tokaido road in 49 days. This year, Evolta will race the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon.

GRAIL mission will map Moon's gravitational field

The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory better known as GRAIL is the next lunar exploration mission. The objective of this mission is to obtain a very precise map of the Moon's gravitational field, and based on this information determine the Moon's interior structure, composition, and understand its thermal evolution. To achieve this goal two spacecraft will be placed in the same orbit around the Moon. The probes will sense the relative distance between them, while they fly over the satellite's surface. The variations in measurements will be caused by the different levels of gravity. This data will be transmitted to Earth were scientists will translate all this information into a “high-resolution map”.

Pluto, the former ninth planet of the Solar System

Pluto and its moons. (Image property of NASA)

Pluto was considered for a long time the ninth planet of our Solar System. However, that changed on 2006, when the International Astronomical Union (IAU) decided to reclassify Pluto in the new category named “dwarf planets” changing the landscape of or Solar System as we knew it. But, what were the reasons that made astronomers reconsider our Solar System distribution? And why was just Pluto affected?

The World Wide Web beginning and early years

On August 6, 1991 Tim Berners-Lee, a computer scientist, wrote in a newsgroup: 

 The WWW Project merges the techniques of information retrieval and hypertext to make an easy but powerful global information system…The project started with the philosophy that much academic information should be freely available to anyone…

This date is known as the birth of the World Wide Web.

The World Wide Web, WWW, or Web is a model that specifies how to share and access information over the Internet. The first steps to becoming the web a reality had taken place in 1980 when Tim Berners-Lee, a graduated in Physics from Queen’s College at Oxford University, started working as Independent Contractor at CERN(European Organization for Nuclear Research). During that time, projects’ information was stored and updated in different computers, and sharing information was difficult because of the differences in hardware, operating systems and software. To solve that issue and improve the way of organizing and sharing the information Berners-Lee built Enquire, an hypertext based software that allowed users create, edit and extract information. Enquire was the predecessor of Web.