Notices by Elizabeth Tasker (elizabethtasker@mastodon.online)

JAXA Press Briefing today at 2pm JST on the latest from the X-ray telescope, XRISM, that was launched last September 🔭🛰️!

I expect it will be... entirely in Japanese... but there'll be an English web release on the ISAS website hopefully around the same time ⭐

📺 : https://www.youtube.com/live/qgapFfAdzIg

Experiment in progress…

Can I get this Gulikit KingKong 2 Pro controller to work with my Mac… and the game, “No Man’a Sky”?

There are a lot of words that don’t intrinsically belong together in that sentence. Like “Mac” and “controller”… or “game” 😅

But! Reddit said I should be successful, and that’s completely trustworthy!

(I should add that I don’t believe a word of this and bought the controller cheaply secondhand. I guess I believe about half a word 🤔. Anyway, no harm, no foul.)

This is born from the fact that I love playing NMS in VR but in truth… it’s janky and my poor old pc has a 1060 graphics card.

The game is surprisingly pretty good on the M1 Mac (my main machine) but I don’t really like the mouse and keyboard controls.

This is how we fell down this oddly niche rabbit hole.

The backup is to use the controller with my pc. Totally doable if I move the computer, but why when I could try what no sensible person does and game on my Mac?

@moonmehta The accuracy of the pinpoint landing technique is measured before the final descent, after which the spacecraft searches for dangerous boulders and prioritises safety over accuracy. That value is less than 10m. The final landing (which included boulder avoidance and the loss of one of the two main engines) was 55m away from the landing site.

Goodnight, SLIM 😭 Japan's brave little moon lander has been silent since the end of April, and communication attempts have officially stopped. But, as a landing tech demo, it was only designed to last a few hours and it landed in January sooooo....

SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) should now mean "Small Indestructible Moon Lander".

https://global.jaxa.jp/press/2024/08/20240826-1_e.html

Scenes from the virtual IAU GA #Astronomy2024! @futuremeetings built a 3D virtual space which could be accessed on #VR headset, regular web browser, or smartphone. This was the JAXA room that I created as one of the exhibits! It included posters on the JAXA small body missions (including Hayabusa2, MMX, SLIM), models of the spacecraft and asteroid Ryugu, a Haya2-kun mascot you could ride and a link to a scene on asteroid Ryugu, created by OmniScope.

@Polychrome @guysoft there is an app for the Quest headset for the platform that we’re using: spatial.io. Unfortunately, I think other headsets aren’t supported.

Everyone, we're expecting... a VR experience at the International Astronomical Union GA Exhibition Hall!

If you're in Cape Town for the #IAU2024, you can try a VR headset and step fully into the virtual venue for the conference, chat with online attendees, check out the virtual exhibits and sit on the IAU sign (the VIRTUAL sign. Do not sit on the physical sign!).

Remember, if you're registered for the conference, you can also join the virtual space from anywhere on your laptop or smartphone.

@guysoft Yes if you're registered for the meeting (you don't even need a VR headset: the space is cross-compatible on browser and smartphone)

National Azabu (a foreign food supermarket in Tokyo) has a sale in Jaffa cakes. Admittedly, strawberry Jaffa cakes which is mildly horrifying, but I moved in anyway! So. My afternoon is set.

Tried out Dungeons of Eternity tonight in #VR where you fight off legions of the undead 🧟 I will say a lot less fun on your own (i.e. creepy AF) but a good laugh with friends! You’re only allowed a group of three though, which means we have to wait for one of our usual four to be away/deathly ill/with better friends/fed up of our shenanigans.

Me n’ my asteroid chip! A selfie at the London Science Museum yesterday, seeing the exhibit of the grain from asteroid Ryugu returned by the Japanese Hayabusa2 mission. This is the first time I’d seen the exhibit after delivering the asteroid grain from JAXA to London last summer! (The how-to for smuggling asteroids is here: https://cosmos.isas.jaxa.jp/how-to-carry-an-asteroid-around-the-world/ )

In my 20s, I was very excited about travel. In my 40s, I’m tempted to cancel the entire trip at the last minute and claim to have contracted want-a-regular-week-with-the-cat fever.

What did we unwrap at #JAXA recently? IT'S A MARTIAN MOON ROVER!

Admittedly, you can't actually see the rover yet in this video but I really like it because you hear the team say "Yatta!" and "Tadaa!" 😀

The rover was developed in Europe by the German and French space agencies, and will join the Japan-led Martian Moons eXploration (#MMX) mission to Phobos that is scheduled to launch in FY 2026.

The rover's name is IDEFIX (after the dog in Asterix comics) .

Friend, speaking about SLIM: It just woke up and was put straight back to work?

Me, speaking far less specifically: That’s academia.

Here's today's press release for JAXA's SLIM lunar landing!

TL;DR:

Pinpoint site identification was crazily successful.

We were lowering into position, detecting boulders like a champ.

THEN ONE OF THE ENGINES DROPPED OFF.

(I kid you not)

(we don't know why yet)

(maybe space pirates)

But we still soft-landed on 1 engine.

(TAKE THAT SPACE PIRATES!)

but on our head.

Strangely, might not be a big deal once the Sun moves round to the other side of the spacecraft.

https://global.jaxa.jp/press/2024/01/20240125-1_e.html

Puffed up! Quite easy too, although now I feel more awake 😅

Tomorrow. My good people. We land.

ON THE MOON 🌝

This is not a drill ⚒️

JAXA's Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) mission is going to attempt the first "pin point" landing, with an accuracy of less than 100m.

(This is compared with conventional landing techniques, were anywhere within about 10km is considered pretty snazzy.)

If successful, SLIM will also be Japan's first successful moon landing.

I've fallen into "No Man's Sky"! I made it to the space station, and have selected an avatar that truly resembles what I look like... on the inside.

I now have a glowing ball for a head, which seems to be held in place by rotating electromagnets. Magnificent!

#NMS was created for PC but the #VR adaption (which I'm playing) is not at all bad. It's really... quite... addictive. I played for 4 hours and I'm eying my battery and wondering if I could hop on for a few minutes... before... bed...

Coming in... upside down... because I'm a terrible flier and planets can appear above you in space. #VR #NMS