So, what is Colabs? And why did Puli Space Technologies decide to be there?
We had our final answer after meeting with the Colabs team and a lot of interesting people and companies at the Pre-Launch Party, an unofficial opening of the place. And the best part was (we can't get tired of it) that they found us equally interesting. We discussed topics like how we intend to reach the Moon, why we want to do it, what is needed to do it, durnig the evening of July 5th. All tough and complicated questions and we had a hard time to convince everybody but we succeeded.
384,400. About four hundred thousand km (~240,000 mi) – is it near or far? Compared to the distances in our everyday life, its a lot but still, one has to go that far to reach our closest neighbor in the heavens. The average distance of the Moon from the Earth, it takes more than a second for a ray of light and at usually three days for a spacecraft to cover it. But how does the Moon orbit us exactly?
The Earth, the Moon and the distance between them, to scale.
Firstly, it obeys Kepler's laws of planetary motion: the orbital path is an ellipse around us, and it travels faster when closer and slower when farther. It usually comes as close as 362,570 km and goes out to 405,410 km – changing its actual distance by more than 10 per cent! But since we are not alone in the Solar System, these figures are subject to change, most prominently from the influence of the Sun.
There is a lot of popular belief about the Moon, and according to most myths something eats it up during eclipse. According to the belief of some Indian tribes in America, huge dogs hunt the Moon this time, and when they get it, they tear it apart, and it is the blood from its wounds that paint our celestial companion dark red. Today, of course, we know that the phenomenon has nothing to do with the dogs, and the atmosphere of the Earth causes the shades of color that can be seen during the eclipse. The atmosphere of Earth filters the blue and green colors of sunlight, so the rest of the light is dominated by red or orange. Thus, as we examined the question with scientific precision, we can certainly declare that Puli will not eat the Moon, only bark at it at the most!
Preparations for cooking in the stewpot in the wet weather then began with an ancient method: with lots of patience and no matches (yes, You are right: it was flintstone and steel). Soon after, we could feel the delicious aromas of wobbling paprika potatoes with meat.
It started raining, the air is cooled down a bit and everyone put on what they found to keep warm, or stayed by the fire, where apples and sausages were roasting on skewers.
Roasting apples. Photo: Tamás Kerékgyártó
The TevePuli demo rover was with us climbing the mounds and dips of the field, and the weather conditions could not discourage us from building and flying a kite. The kite made of golden foil, true to the mission of Puli in space, flew a nice trajectory, despite of adverse wind conditions.
Kite flight preparations. Photo: Tamás Kerékgyártó
The picnic was just a good opportunity to meet new team members, to do some team building, to discuss issues, and simply perfect for a relaxing weekend activity.
Watch the work of our Zoltán Bereczky through his own eyes. This is how one of Team Puli's concept rovers, the Teve ("Camel") materializes in its 2nd demo version.
You might take a look at our earlier rover demos here.
We are delighted to present a message from our Head of Education & Public Outreach Team, Márton Deák, after closing the submission for our Drawing Competition.
Dear Applicants and Teachers!
We have reached the deadline for submitting drawings to Team Puli Space's first art competition. We would like to thank everybody for the many creative and outstandingly sophisticated works of art submitted. It is amazing to see the tremendous amount of work You have put into this contest. As we have received an unexpectedly high number of entries, the jury will perhaps be able to announce it's decision first in July, although we'll do everything to keep the process as fast as we can. In any case, You will hear from us just in time! And to save You from boredom till then, we will start publishing a selected number of paintings, drawings and photographs on our webpage soon - although at first without the sender's name.
Best wishes for a successful end of the schoolyear - and be prepared for a nice summer break :-)
On 26th March 2011, we visited the city of Kecskemét, home of our cooperation partner The Planetarium of Kecskemét -- http://plani.hu/. The reason for this visit was an event, organized to celebrate Earth Hour - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Hour -, a world-wide activity to raise awareness towards the need to take action on climate change. Team Leader Tibor Pacher talked in two lectures not only about the GLXP and Team Puli's participation, he discussed the close connections between environmental issues and space activities as well. Of course, we thought of the kids as well, who enjoyed to control our demonstration rovers.
Video: many thanks to our Team Members Miklós Pathy and Tamás Fogarasy.
There is a lot of popular belief about the Moon, and according to most myths something eats it up during eclipse. According to the belief of some Indian tribes in America, huge dogs hunt the Moon this time, and when they get it, they tear it apart, and it is the blood from its wounds that paint our celestial companion dark red. Today, of course, we know that the phenomenon has nothing to do with the dogs, and the atmosphere of the Earth causes the shades of color that can be seen during the eclipse. The atmosphere of Earth filters the blue and green colors of sunlight, so the rest of the light is dominated by red or orange. Thus, as we examined the question with scientific precision, we can certainly declare that Puli will not eat the Moon, only bark at it at the most!
