News 
Just out of Curiosity?
As I'm sure all our readers are aware, the Mars Space Laboratory has successfully landed and has already started sending back images. NASA's website may be recovering from the massive number of hits received over the time of touch-down, but just in case you can read about the landing here.
As well as a long-life plutonium battery (which should make Curiosity the Duracell Bunny of Mars rovers) and a whole host of experimental equipment (including a laser*), the rover carries a chip inscribed with the names of over 1.2 million well-wishers who signed up for the "Send Your Name To Mars" programme**. Several on the Satellite 4 committee signed up — we'd like to know how many of our members did so too, so please go to our Facebook page and sound off!
* - You can just see the tabloid headline now: NASA sends laser-armed atomic robot to Mars!!
** - The scale they've used for the Participation Map isn't very helpful, since the US data swamps the rest of the world. Watch this space for a more helpful view...
Added on 2012-08-08 09:13 by Mad Elf
Mars Science Laboratory on final approach
Fingers crossed everyone: the rover Curiosity will make touchdown tomorrow, so let's hope it lands safely. The landing relies on a long sequence of carefully-timed manoeuvres and explosives, as detailed here. Hopefully this will all go according to plan - with any luck, all of the teams involved in the mission chose to use the same system of measurements. As long as they avoid FFF...
Added on 2012-08-05 16:58 by Mad Elf
Jim Burns Gallery on site
Our artist Guest of Honour Jim Burns has very kindly given us a set of his artwork to display on our site. Please take the time to view them here.
Added on 2012-07-30 23:04 by Mad Elf
Jim Burns Award Nomination
Jim Burns has just been nominated for the Chesley ‘Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award’. This will be awarded at Chicon 7. We wish him good luck and hope his nomination is successful.
Added on 2012-06-22 20:34 by Mad Elf
Voyager Boldly Goes...
New data from Voyager 1 indicates that it is now entering a distinctly different region of space than previously travelled. JPL speculate that this indicates that the 34-year-old spacecraft is about to leave the solar system and become humankind's first interstellar vehicle. Satellite 4 wishes it well as it takes this leap into outer space.
Full story here...
Added on 2012-06-16 10:44 by Mad Elf