Author - Charles M0OXO

NASA has narrowed the target for its most advanced Mars rover, Curiosity, which will land on the Red Planet in August.

The car-sized rover will touch down closer to its ultimate destination for science operations, but also closer to the foot of a mountain slope that poses a landing hazard. It was possible to adjust landing plans because of increased confidence in precision landing technology aboard the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft, which is carrying the Curiosity rover. That spacecraft can aim closer without hitting Mount Sharp at the center of Gale crater. Rock layers located in the mountain are the prime location for research with the rover.

Curiosity is scheduled to land at approximately 10:31 p.m. PDT Aug. 5 (1:31 a.m. EDT, Aug. 6). Following checkout operations, Curiosity will begin a two-year study of whether the landing vicinity ever offered an environment favorable for microbial life.

Anyone receiving Direct Qsl cards from MØOXO.Com in the last few months will have found not only their requested Qsl card in the envelope, but also this flyer promoting the DX Code of Conduct.

I make no apologies for this and it is something that will be repeated for a long time to come. We need to get the message across to some of our friends that the bad behaviour on Bands that causes stress and dis-harmony to other operators just cannot be tolerated. We are aiming to make the hobby more enjoyable and causing qrm, keying up and other countless forms of noise over a Qso is really not good enough.

I have 10,000 of these flyers now printed!

The Queen Diamond Jubilee Special ‘Q’ Callsigns event in the UK ended at Midnight last night.

The Bands saw lots of activity over the last month when UK Stations had the opportunity to use the letter ‘Q’ in their prefix to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee. Awards for working 100 of these special stations are available and the event seemed very popular with good pile-ups and qso numbers despite the poor band conditions. Well done to those who took part and thanks to the chasers, a very memorable event for sure.

See you for the Olympic (‘O’) event in a few weeks time!

The 9M0L team from the recent Spratly Dxpedition have now issued the preview of their Qsl Card.

Steve, G3ZVW (also ZD8N), is is actually operating as V73/AF6SU from the V73AX club station on Kwajalein Atoll (WW Loc. RJ38UR), Ralik Chain (IOTA OC-028), Marshall Islands.

How much of planet Earth is made of water? Very little, actually.

Although oceans of water cover about 70 percent of Earth’s surface, these oceans are shallow compared to the Earth’s radius. The above illustration shows what would happen if all of the water on or near the surface of the Earth were bunched up into a ball. The radius of this ball would be only about 700 kilometers, less than half the radius of the Earth’s Moon, but slightly larger than Saturn’s moon Rhea which, like many moons in our outer Solar System, is mostly water ice.

How even this much water came to be on the Earth and whether any significant amount is trapped far beneath Earth’s surface remain topics of research.

The Tokyo Skytree, twice as tall as the Eiffel Tower, and its surrounding retail and office complex opened on Tuesday with thousands lining up in the rain for a first look at the 143 billion yen ($1.8 billion) development.

Tokyo Skytree with it’s 634m tower took four years to build and surpassed the 600-metre Canton Tower in Guangzhou, China, as the world’s tallest, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. Dubai’s Burj Khalifa is the tallest building at 828 meters.

A tower is a structure where less than half the height is occupied by usable floor space, according to the council. The tower, which cost 65 billion yen on its own, has two observation decks, one at 350 metres and another at 450 metres. A trip to the lower deck will cost 2,000 yen.