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To explore Jupiter’s moon Europa for signs of life, NASA/JPL developed a brand new, all-metal antenna design to survive the harch conditions.

Europa has more than twice as much liquid water as Earth’s oceans. An ocean estimated to be anywhere from 40 to 100 miles (60 to 150 kilometers) deep spans the entire moon, locked beneath an icy surface over a dozen kilometers thick. The only direct evidence for this ocean is the plumes of water that occasionally erupt through cracks in the ice, jetting as high as 200 km above the surface.

The endless, sunless, roiling ocean of Europa might sound astoundingly bleak. Yet it’s one of the most promising candidates for finding extraterrestrial life. Designing a robotic lander that can survive such harsh conditions will require rethinking all of its systems to some extent, including arguably its most important: communications. After all, even if the rest of the lander works flawlessly, if the radio or antenna breaks, the lander is lost forever.

Ultimately, when NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where I am a senior antenna engineer, began to seriously consider a Europa lander mission, we realized that the antenna was the limiting factor. The antenna needs to maintain a direct-to-Earth link across more than 550 million miles (900 million km) when Earth and Jupiter are at their point of greatest separation. The antenna must be radiation-hardened enough to survive an onslaught of ionizing particles from Jupiter, and it cannot be so heavy or so large that it would imperil the lander during takeoff and landing. One colleague, when we laid out the challenge in front of us, called it impossible. We built such an antenna anyway—and although it was designed for Europa, it is a revolutionary enough design that we’re already successfully implementing it in future missions for other destinations in the solar system.

The antenna cannot be large, because then the lander will be too heavy. It cannot be inefficient for the same reason, because requiring more power would necessitate bulky power systems instead. And it needs to survive exposure to a brutal amount of radiation from Jupiter. This last point requires that the antenna must be mostly, if not entirely, made out of metal, because metals are more resistant to ionizing radiation.

Read more in the IEEE Spectrum article here.

Check out this charming spotlight on 107-year-old French pianist Collete Maze, from NPR.

Colette Maze welcomes me warmly into her apartment on the 14th floor of a building overlooking the Seine River. From her flowered balcony, she has a view of the Eiffel Tower. She offers me a whiskey or a cognac — along with a hearty laugh as it’s 10:30 in the morning.

It’s that humor, a sense of optimism and her beloved piano that have buttressed and comforted this centenarian through an often difficult life. Maze has just released her sixth album at the age of 107.

While she lives alone, on this day her 71-year-old son, Fabrice, has joined us. Maze sits down to play her Steinway baby grand — one of two pianos she owns — with her gray tabby cat, Tigrou, stretched out on the carpet near her feet.

Read more.

Mbira are a traditional instrument of the Shona people of Zimbabwe. In the 1920s a modern interpretation of the mbira was made and exported by ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey. Tracey’s design was modeled after the mbira nyunga nyunga and named ‘Kalimba’ after an ancient predecessor of the mbira family of instruments. Under the name Kalimba, Maurice White of the band Earth, Wind and Fire popularized the instrument in the 1970s. And now maker Lonershy has turned a Kalimba with ambient pads and MIDI controller. Here’s more from Lonershy:

A way to play ambient pads on the kalimba, or using the kalimba… however you want to understand it. But a a great way to build diy instruments.

Tyler Morgan-Wall created a 3D map of the Earth’s submarine fiber optic cable network, visualized in RStats with rayrender.

via MOTHERBOARD

The data was visualized by coder Tyler Morgan-Wall using a simple script and GeoJSON—an open source format for visualizing geographic features. The data comes from Submarine Cable Map, a website run by TeleGeography, a geographic data intel company. According to TeleGeography, there are 426 active submarine cables in the world. The cables are mostly the diameter of a garden hose and filled with filaments the width of a human hair.

Read more and check out the code here

New #dataviz! The Earth's submarine fiber optic cable network, visualized in #RStats with #rayrender.

Code:https://t.co/6tFsS4vfAK

Rayrender Github:https://t.co/iB5nWhGY7l pic.twitter.com/1FTKM0FPHr

— Tyler Morgan-Wall (@tylermorganwall) September 22, 2021

Vox makes explaining an obvious answer to an interesting question worth the watch.

Doors are hard because all of game development is hard.

Read more.

San Francisco-based company Oskitone has designed a 3D printable, hackable, simple synthesizer. Here’s more via github:

• Beginner-friendly: All components are through-hole (instead of surface mount) for easier soldering, and full assembly takes about 45min. Standalone, battery-powered, doesn’t need a computer or external speakers to work. Fun!
• 3D-Printable: Besides the electronics and nuts and bolts, all parts are 3D-printed. And with a total width of ~160mm (about 6.3″), the Scout can fit on smaller, “Mini” (18x18x18cm) size print beds.
• Hackable: Arduino-compatible and fully open source! Hook up an FTDI Serial TTL-232 cable (sold separately) to update its code using the Arduino IDE.
• Minimally featured: 1.5 octaves of keys, a volume knob, on/off switch, speaker, headphone jack. Monophonic square wave with fixed glide and octave.

Oskitone

Good use of some vintage tubes. As these become harder and harder to source, projects like this become more special. From reddit shared by Hackaday:

When you have a small stock of vacuum fluorescent displays (VFDs) straight out of the 1976 Radio Shack catalog, you might sit around wondering what to do with them. When [stepawayfromthegirls] found out that his stash of seven DT-1704A tubes may be the last in existence, there was no question. They must be displayed! [stepawayfromthegirls]’ mode of display is this captivating clock build. Four VFDs with their aqua colored elements are set against a black background in a bespoke wooden case. Looking under the hood, the beauty only increases.

Read more and head to reddit for some excellent build photos!

Columbia Climate School’s State of the Planet published this piece on Jasper Baur’s work:

More recently, in order to improve the detection rate, the team has started employing machine learning, training their computers to recognize various mine characteristics and quickly display them. In a paper just published in the Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction led by Baur and former fellow student Gabriel Steinberg, they show how artificial intelligence has allowed them to increase the visual detection rate to more than 90 percent.

Read more from State of the Planet and Demining Research Community

Welcome to drone day on the Adafruit blog. Every Monday we deliver the latest news, products and more from the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), quadcopter and drone communities. Drones can be used for video & photography (dronies), civil applications, policing, farming, firefighting, military and non-military security work, such as surveillance of pipelines. Previous posts can be found via the #drone tag and our drone / UAV categories.

It always seemed like being a mail carrier was one of the few modern-day occupations that let you stay active. These mail jumpers, however, are next level! Fun story from Atlas Obscura.

The town is the first and only one in the United States where jumpers deliver mail from a passenger-carrying mailboat, a tradition that began in 1916 when the primitive roads were too difficult to traverse. It has continued uninterrupted, May through September, for the last 105 years.

Read more.

Learn all about blue and bluterflies in this oldie but goodie from It’s Okay To Be Smart on YouTube:

Among living things, the color blue is oddly rare. Blue rocks, blue sky, blue water, sure. But blue animals? They are few and far between. And the ones that do make blue? They make it in some very strange and special ways compared to other colors.

See more

The US Patent office has list of patents/inventions in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month. Its a pretty fun list to scroll through:

In conjunction with Hispanic Heritage Month, the Department of Commerce’s United States Patent and Trademark Office is recognizing some Hispanic Americans whose inventions contributed to the nation’s social and economic well-being.

Guillermo González Camarena

Born in Guadalajara, México, Guillermo González Camarena was granted U.S. Patent 2,296,019 for a “Chromoscopic adapter for television equipment”, an early color television transmission system. His invention was used in NASA’s Voyager mission in 1979 to take pictures and video of Jupiter.

Fernando Torres

Born in Nicaragua, Fernando Torres has four patents, including U.S. Patent 8,478,341 for “Automatic Selection of SIM Cards in Mobile Devices.”

See the whole list!

via MIT

The new system is the latest in a series of applications based on initial findings six years ago by members of the same research team, initially developed for desalination of seawater or brackish water, and later adapted for removing radioactive compounds from the cooling water of nuclear power plants. The new version is the first such method that might be applicable for treating household water supplies, as well as industrial uses.

The findings are published today in the journal Environmental Science and Technology – Water, in a paper by MIT graduate students Huanhuan Tian, Mohammad Alkhadra, and Kameron Conforti, and professor of chemical engineering Martin Bazant.

Read more.

ADAFRUIT WEEKLY EDITORIAL ROUND-UP

We’ve got so much happening here at Adafruit that it’s not always easy to keep up! Don’t fret, we’ve got you covered. Each week we’ll be posting a handy round-up of what we’ve been up to, ranging from learn guides to blog articles, videos, and more.

BLOG

Stemma QT-fication of LED backpacks
Our HT16K33-based LED backpacks are a classic Adafruit design we’ve sold for many many years. So we’re thinking of updating them to QT-fication for easy plug-n-play usage. We’re going to do the 7-segment and quad-alphanum at the same time. maybe also a mini 16×8 too – video.

See more!

More BLOG:

• STEM Chat: Our Favorite STEM Books #STEM #STEMEducation #STEMkids
• Opamp Interchangeability – Collin’s Lab Notes
• Getting Color Output out of a TI-99/4A #VintageComputing
• STEMMA QTification of ADXL3xx accelerometers

LEARN

3D Printed Frame for Adaruit IS31FL3741 LED Glasses

3D print a pair of frames for your Adafruit LED Glasses. Designed to fit any Feather compatible board! Use a STEMMA QT cable to easily connect to an Adafruit Feather.

The parts are secured using hardware screws and nuts. The frames feature built-in nose pads for comfort and a better fit. The arms are attached to the frames built-in hinges using hardware screws and nuts.

Check out the full guide!

More LEARN

• Accessing and Using Adafruit PCB Design Files
• Adafruit 2.9″ eInk Display Breakouts and FeatherWings
• Updated guide: PyLeap device enabled – In Rainbows

Browse all that’s new in the Adafruit Learning System here!

New nEw NEWs From Adafruit is an email newsletter sent out once a week to subscribers only. It features new products, special offers, exciting original content, and more. Sign-up NOW for the Adafruit weekly Newsletter here: https://www.adafruit.com/newsletter

Human footprints found in current-day New Mexico may be between 23,000 and 21,000 years old.

via Science News

Over 60 “ghost tracks” — so-called because they pop up and disappear across the landscape — show that people romped through what’s now New Mexico 23,000 to 21,000 years ago, geoscientist Matthew Bennett and colleagues report in the Sept. 24 Science. If true, the fossil findings would be definitive proof that humans were in North America during the height of the last ice age, which peaked around 21,500 years ago.

Read more.

Star Wars is getting the Homer treatment. Like any good space opera, Star Wars shares themes with the classic epics. Picked up by Gizmodo:

You’ve likely heard how George Lucas was heavily inspired by Joseph Campbell’s research on heroic myths when creating Star Wars, and the works of Homer are arguably the most important, most influential heroic tales in Western culture. So this adaptation is extremely appropriate, and as a classics major myself, I’m pretty excited (as well as for the book’s illustrations, which are done in the style of ancient Greek pottery). The Odyssey of Star Wars will be available next week, on September 28, and you can pre-order it here. Meanwhile, however, you can read this exclusive excerpt from the book, in which Luke confronts Darth Vader on Bespin, only to learn… you know.

Learn more!

Amateur (“ham”) radio operators have been experimenting with ways to use computers in their hobby since PCs became widely available—perhaps even before then. While many people picture hams either talking into a microphone or tapping a telegraph key, many hams now type on a keyboard or even click buttons on a computer screen to make contacts.

Even hams who still prefer to talk or use Morse code may still use computers for some things, such as logging contacts or predicting radio conditions. While most hams use Windows, there is no shortage of ham radio software for Linux.

The article on lwn.net describes utilities, communications tools and radio modems.

See more in the article at https://lwn.net/Articles/868309/

George Lucas famously gave up some up-front money to direct the original trilogy in favor of rights for sequels and merchandizing. And then he cannily set up the merchandizing to be a part of the world-building by filling every frame with characters and objects that each have their own history, and then providing that history through toys. Back before Star Wars Wiki the only way to learn the name of that yak-faced alien in the back of Jabba’s Palace (Saelt-Marae) or the “Stay on target” guy (Davin Krail) was to walk to the local Toys-R-Us and find the action figure.

One story that has yet to be told until now, is the history of the bounty hunter whose armor Princess Leia stole to con her way into Jabba’s Palace. Here’s more from SlashGear:

Boushh first appeared in Star Wars lore as the name given the previous owner of the armor Leia wears at Jabba’s Palace in Return of the Jedi. Unlike the massive amount of work Lucasfilm put into generating interest in the character Boba Fett in the years before the release of The Empire Strikes Back, little was done to explain the origin of said armor. They DID give it the name Boushh, though – as evidenced in the 1983 Kenner action figure.

Return of the Jedi was released that same year – 1983. It wasn’t until the year 1996 that we got close to hearing where Boushh lost his armor. Even then – it was just a note. The android character Guri mentioned the death of Boushh as part of a deal gone wrong: “He tried to rascal Black Sun for more credits on a delivery for which there was an agreed-upon contract. That was… unwise.”

Learn and see more!

Sometimes, no matter where you are, you just want to immerse yourself in New York. Even if you’re already there! We get that. Who doesn’t love the satisfaction of recognizing and immediately being able to pin down -with familiarity- the exact location in the shot?!

Criterion Channel also understands that love for New York:

From the fiscal crisis of the 1970s to the September 11 attacks twenty years ago to a global pandemic that swept through America’s largest city, New York has seen its share of troubles over the years—but its resilience and vibrancy remain indomitable. Surveying a century of cinematic history, this panoramic celebration of films set in the five boroughs captures the mix of grime, glamour, and anything-can-happen energy that has made the Big Apple an unforgettable canvas for generations of filmmakers.

Read more and browse the subcategories

Some of Star Trek’s funniest moments from Looper on YouTube. What’s your fave funny moment?

The classic film and television franchise Star Trek is known for its optimistic take on the future, and for blending science fiction action with thought provoking ideas. But as true fans know, the Star Trek series also boasts more than its fair share of comedy as well.

Read more.