citizen science

Fantastic 3-mile High Rocket Flight Captured with Raspberry Pi Camera

Fantastic 3-mile High Rocket Flight Captured with Raspberry Pi Camera

By Gareth Branwyn

Gareth Branwyn

Gareth Branwyn is a freelance writer and the former Editorial Director of Maker Media. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books on technology, DIY, and geek culture. He is currently a contributor to Boing Boing, Wink Books, and Wink Fun. His free weekly-ish maker tips newsletter can be found at garstipsandtools.com.

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This Portland State Aerospace Society’s (PSAS) L-12 launch in mid-July is beautiful and impressive. PSAS is a student-based open source rocketry group out of Portland State University. They make all of their design files, flight data, documentation, launch procedures, etc. available on GitHub. PSAS has a history of pushing the envelope in amateur rocketry and […]

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3D Printable Robotic Telescope You Can Build

By Gareth Branwyn

Gareth Branwyn

Gareth Branwyn is a freelance writer and the former Editorial Director of Maker Media. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books on technology, DIY, and geek culture. He is currently a contributor to Boing Boing, Wink Books, and Wink Fun. His free weekly-ish maker tips newsletter can be found at garstipsandtools.com.

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When I was a teen, I did an astronomy (and archeology) summer camp one year. As part of it, we got to spend some nights operating the telescope in the teacher’s backyard observatory. He had turned a Sears metal garden shed into an impressive little observatory, complete with a motorized roof that opened to raise […]

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What Happens When You Pour Molten Aluminum into a Watermelon?

What Happens When You Pour Molten Aluminum into a Watermelon?

By Gareth Branwyn

Gareth Branwyn

Gareth Branwyn is a freelance writer and the former Editorial Director of Maker Media. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books on technology, DIY, and geek culture. He is currently a contributor to Boing Boing, Wink Books, and Wink Fun. His free weekly-ish maker tips newsletter can be found at garstipsandtools.com.

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Over at The Backyard Scientist, they wanted to know what would happen if you poured molten aluminum into a watermelon. The results were surprising. And very cool. I guess the aluminum flowed into the more watery, less dense cavities inside the melon where the water quickly cooled the metal before it could cook its way […]

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OpenExplorer Launches with New Adventures, OpenROV Giveaway

OpenExplorer Launches with New Adventures, OpenROV Giveaway

Mike Senese

By Mike Senese

Mike Senese

Mike Senese is a content producer with a focus on technology, science, and engineering. He served as Executive Editor of Make: magazine for nearly a decade, and previously was a senior editor at Wired. Mike has also starred in engineering and science shows for Discovery Channel, including Punkin Chunkin, How Stuff Works, and Catch It Keep It.

An avid maker, Mike spends his spare time tinkering with electronics, fixing cars, and attempting to cook the perfect pizza. You might spot him at his local skatepark in the SF Bay Area.

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This week the adventure-tracking site OpenExplorer is going live to promote the explorer community, and giving away five OpenROVs to encourage citizen exploration.

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Launching 5,000 into space

Launching $125,000 into space

By Alasdair Allan

Alasdair Allan

Alasdair Allan is a scientist, author, hacker and tinkerer, who is spending a lot of his time thinking about the Internet of Things. In the past he has mesh networked the Moscone Center, caused a U.S. Senate hearing, and contributed to the detection of what was—at the time—the most distant object yet discovered.

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With three days still left to go on their crowdfunding campaign, the hackers behind the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project who wanted to recover the ISEE-3 spacecraft and return it operations, have passed their funding goal.

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Crowdfunding the Recovery of a Lost Spacecraft

Crowdfunding the Recovery of a Lost Spacecraft

By Alasdair Allan

Alasdair Allan

Alasdair Allan is a scientist, author, hacker and tinkerer, who is spending a lot of his time thinking about the Internet of Things. In the past he has mesh networked the Moscone Center, caused a U.S. Senate hearing, and contributed to the detection of what was—at the time—the most distant object yet discovered.

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The hackers behind the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project have moved on to a different challenge. Not content with images, this time they want to recover a whole spacecraft. They want to bring the ISEE-3 space probe home to Earth.

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