The ultimate gadget

I've just read a comment on Slashdot.org that made me recall about a NASA project of a autonomous free-flying camera. I know about this device since long time, perhaps since it was tested during Columbia's STS-87 mission. Its goal is basically to help the crew during extra-vehicular activities (EVA), and to perform inspections of the shuttle or ISS from the outside. A pretty useful gadget, I may say. Nowadays, it seems to exist an improved version of the AERCam/Sprint prototype called simply AERCam.

What other gadgets has NASA in their labs?

What's that?

It is white, tiny, cold. Yes, you know it. Snow.

Snow all around. Only white landscape in all directions. It is beatuful. As beautiful as irritating. I'm a southern spaniard, thus I haven't seen much snow before I landed in the Netherlands. Neither the Netherlands gets that much snow in winter. Not in the past four winters.

Since wednesday, we are all enjoying snow and ice. Specially people like me that work in another town. Everyday, I drive about 30km to work on local roads mostly. Those kind of roads that get the least attention from the local authorities and, hence, aren't well maintained.

It is the first time too that I drive in snow. The road gets icy and the breaking distance enlarges out of control. Pretty scary, though. In the first drive-with-snow attempt I almost had a collision. The car glided when I wanted to do a stop at a crossroad. I panicked, by the way, when I felt my car out of my control. Instinctively, I steered the wheel hard to the left to "avoid" the front car. Luckily, the car's rear-right wheel hit the sidewalk border. My car stopped. I got an adrenaline shoot at 10 km/h. Live threatening, indeed. Needless to say that I arrived home completely exhausted due to the tension of driving in such conditions. An experience that I'm interested to repeat anytime soon.

In all, it was an impressive week of snow in Europe.

Full success

Yes. After 2 years, the qualification flight of the new Ariene 5 ECA is a success by Arianespace, ESA, and Europe. The most advanced european launcher managed to put into orbit the XTAR-EUR satellite and the MAQSAT-B2 satellite. The flight 164 got lift-off few minutes passed 22h CET after 70 minutes of delay over the planned schedule caused by a technical problem with the payload. This time the hold was at 56 seconds from ignition, like a typical action film. Because this was a test flight, they didn't want to take any extra risk, so they double-checked all the systems before restarting the countdown. The XTAR-EUR satellite was the first put into orbit 26 minutes after launch. This satellite is a joint venture of Loral Space & communications and Hisdesat. Its purpose is for some kind of gubernamental communication, military perhaps, covering an area from east Barzil to Singapore. The second satellite released is the MAQSAT-B2 meant to simulate the weight and size of the average communication satellite. This hardware also aimed to measure several parameters from the rocket during its mission (TMA) and record images (DVCAM). This satellite also carried an interesting experiement: the SLOSHSAT-FLEVO. The microsatellite Sloshsat-FLEVO (Facility for Liquid Experimentation and Verification in Orbit) is supported by the Dutch National Aerospace Laboratory and the University of Groningen. This satellite will orbit the earth for several weeks carrying 33.5 liter of water in a tank of 86.9 liter in total. The goal is to test a fluid dynamic model in microgravity. Apart from the technologcal and commercial implications, I'm surprised they didn't use beer instead of water. By the way, the FLEVO name makes reference to the region of The Netherlands where this satellite was built, Flevoland. The overall experience was very positive. There were many persons attending the event and plenty of food too.

Is it yet a typical Saturday?

Oh, yes!. Its another typical Saturday here in The Netherlands. Windy, rainy, and about 10˚C (één graad of tien, so they say in dutch). It is one of those days that you feel extremely encouraged to stay in bed. Great!.

I don't have much plans for today: some clean up, shopping at the nearby mall, working on my thesis, and going to work. Yes, I know. Going to work in the weekend is not good for my mental health. I can't help it. I have no tv at home and I feel like watching the launch of the Ariane 5 ECA, quite a historical event for the ESA though.

At work, they usually organise especial events around important ESA achivements. In events like today, because ESA's mission control is at ESOC (Germany), I have very little chances to follow all the happenings from the front line. We can't have all fun here at ESTEC. Thus my only chance is to watch all via the ESA's tv channel. Today at ESTEC, the evening programma starts at 19h with a short presentation speech by a guy from the University of Groningen. Around 20h we should get the tv feed directly from the Spaceport in Kourou. I'm hopeful the Ariane 5 will not fail again as it did on december 2002. Let keep fingers crossed.

Now I must go on. As I said before, I have some things to do today before the fun start. I shall write more on this evening happenings.

Adios

Fernando Morales

• Languages
  Spanish and English (fluent) and Dutch (fair).
• Career Interests
  Very interested in research and development of biomedical technology. In general, a job which requires the use and development of my knowledge and skills.
• Career
  
  • Present - 2004/07
    Life sciences instrumentation engineer at the European Space Agency, Noordwijk ZH (NL). Full-time contractor position provided by Serco FM BV, Katwijk ZH (NL).
  • 2003/12 – 2000/01
    Ph.D. in Medical Sciences, November 2005 at the University of Groningen (NL). Dissertation title: “Improving the clinical applicability of laser Doppler perfusion monitoring”.
• Academic Education
  
  • 1993/09 – 1999/09
    University of Granada, Granada (Spain).
    Master in Sciences (Biology), September 1999.
• Work Experience and Skills
  
  • Technical support in biomedical research and development activities.
  • Conceptual planning and implementation of biomedical test set-ups.
  • Analysis, evaluation, reporting and interpretation of data from biological or physiological experiments.
  • Good oral and written communication.
  • Excellent team working.
  • Very autodidact.
  • Learn quickly any method and technique.
  Other highlighted skills:
  
  • Advanced user of computer hardware.
  • Advanced user of Windows and GNU/Linux.
  • Data analysis and statistics software: SPSS, SigmaPlot.
  • Generic applications: office software, LaTeX, image manipulation.
  • Programming languages: XHTML+CSS, and some of VisualBASIC, C, Linux shell scripts.
  • Driving license class B.
• Hobbies
  Photography, astronomy, sports, music, films, salsa dancing.

Kind of fun

It finally arrived!

Today I stepped into the mail room and suddenly I noticed an odd smell; pretty stinky, thought. Then I looked around and, GREAT!!, it was there standing. A small box that my mom packed with some tasteful food, including a piece of cheese. I recognised right away what it is that stink coming from. Yes!!, the cheese. So delitious. I'm looking forward to go home and give it a try. Well, actually the cheese is meant to be spreaded on bread because it is very creamy.

Quickly as I just had stolen something, I ran to my office. I only had one tought in my mind: get the fucking stinky cheese in the car ASAP!!!. The box just stayed in my offcie for 2 mins, and now I've got a deep fragance stuck in here. But not only that. The whole corridor stinks, back and forth from my office. It was fun to hear how people passing by were sniffing hard trying to recognise and/or pin-point the odour. I better keep myself in anonimacy.

Sunday morning

Today is Sunday. A nice blue sky can be seen thru the window, for a change.

It is more than a month and a half that I'm living in The Hague. I believe the adaptation process goes okay. I do like this city, somehow, and I know there are many things still to be discovered. Yet, it is hard starting in a new place. It isn't the first time, though, but I still dislike it.

This time there is one big difference. I've got internet. I can contact with distant friends and have short chats with them, sometimes.

Lets do things overhere...

Warming up

My name is Aimak (an internet nickname, of course). Im a spaniard living in Holland (more on that another day). If you want to know more about me and what I have done in the Net, try browsing the results given by Google. This is my first post here, but not my first post in an online blog. I have posted before in a Spanish blog hosted by BarraPunto.com. Yes, I know it is in spanish and if you can't understand it, I can't help. Anyway, the topics varied a lot and mostly computer related. This is it for my first post at Blogger. Now I go to bed. Adios