Voyager

Shortly after the Pioneers made their flybys, the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes followed. They made many important discoveries about Jupiter and Saturn, including rings around Jupiter and the presence of volcanism on Jupiter's moon, Io. Voyager went on to make the first flybys of Uranus, where it discovered 10 new moons, and Neptune, where it found that Neptune actually weighs less than astronomers thought. Both Voyager crafts have enough power to keep transmitting radio signals until at least 2025, and are now exploring the very edge of the solar system and beginning of interstellar space. Voyager 2 is currently the farthest man-made object from Earth, at more than a hundred times the distance from the Earth to the sun, and more than twice as far as Pluto.

 On June 28, 2010, Voyager 2 completed 12,000 days of continuous operations since its launch on August 20, 1977. For nearly 33 years, the venerable spacecraft has been returning unprecedented data about the giant outer planets, the properties of the solar wind between and beyond the planets and the interaction of the solar wind with interstellar winds in the heliosheath. Having traveled more than 21 billion kilometers on its winding path through the planets toward interstellar space, the spacecraft is now nearly 14 billion kilometers from the sun. Traveling at the speed of light, a signal from the ground takes about 12.8 hours to reach the spacecraft. Voyager 1 will reach this milestone on July 13 after having traveled more than 22 billion kilometers. Voyager 1 is currently more than 17 billion kilometers from the Sun.

 Voyager 1 is now at the outer edge of our solar system, in an area called the heliosheath, the zone where the sun's influence wanes. This region is the outer layer of the 'bubble' surrounding the sun, and no one knows how big this bubble actually is. Voyager 1 is literally venturing into the great unknown and is approaching interstellar space. Traveling at a speed of about one million miles per day, Voyager 1 could cross into interstellar space within the next 10 years. 

Between them, the two Voyagers have explored Jupiter, Uranus, Saturn and Neptune, along with dozens of their moons. In addition, they have been studying the solar wind, the stream of charged particles spewing from the sun at nearly a million miles per hour. 

PIONEER - NASA's First Aircrafts

Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, launched in 1972 and 1973, respectively, were the first spacecraft to visit the solar system's most photogenic gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn. Pioneer 10 was the first probe to travel through the solar system's asteroid belt, a field of orbiting rocks between Mars and Jupiter. Then about a year-and-a-half after its launch, the spacecraft made the first flyby of the planet Jupiter. It took stunning up-close photos of the Great Red Spot and the wide swaths of red that band the planet. About a year later, Pioneer 11 flew by Jupiter, and then moved on to Saturn, where it discovered a couple of previously unknown small moons around the planet, and a new ring. Both probes have stopped sending data, and are continuing out on their one-way voyages beyond the solar system.

Pioneer 0, 1, and 2 were the United States' first lunar attempts. These identical spacecraft, which all failed to meet their lunar objectives, were followed by Pioneer 3 and 4, which succeeded in becoming America's first successful lunar missions. Pioneer 5 provided the first maps of the interplanetary magnetic field. Pioneers 6,7,8, and 9 were the world's first solar monitoring network and provided warnings of increased solar activity which could affect Earth orbiting satellites and ground systems. The twin Pioneer 10 and 11 vehicles were the first spacecraft to ever visit Jupiter and Saturn. The craft performed a wide variety of scientific observations of the two planets and returned environmental data that was used during the design of the more sophisticated Voyager probes. The Pioneer Venus mission, consisting of the Pioneer Venus Orbiter (Pioneer 12) and Pioneer Venus Multiprobe (Pioneer 13), was the United States' first long-term mission to observe Venus and studied the structure and composition of the Venusian atmosphere. The mission also provided the first radar map of the planet's surface.

Below is the brief History of all PIONEER attempted to reach to space.

Name	Int'l Desig.	Date	Site	Vehicle	Orbit	Mass(kg)
Notes
Pioneer 0 (Thor Able 1)		8/17/58	ESMC	Thor Able	FTO	38
1st stage malfunction; 1st US lunar attempt
Pioneer 1	1958-[Eta]1	10/11/58	ESMC	Thor Able	HEO	38
Set distance record; failed to reach moon
Pioneer 2	none	11/8/58	ESMC	Thor Able	FTO	39
3rd stage ignition unsuccessful
Pioneer 3	1958-[Theta]1	12/6/58	ESMC	Juno 2	HEO	6
Failed to reach moon; provided radiation data
Pioneer 4	1959-[Nu]1	3/3/59	ESMC	Juno 2	Solar	6
Passed within 60000 km. of moon
Pioneer 5	1960-[Alpha]1	3/11/60	ESMC	Thor Able	Solar	43
Solar research
Pioneer 6	1965-105A	12/16/65	ESMC	Delta E	Solar	63
Measured solar wind, Sun's magnetic field
Pioneer 7	1966-075A	8/17/66	ESMC	Delta E	Solar	63
Monitored solar wind, cosmic rays
Pioneer 8	1967-123A	12/13/67	ESMC	Delta E	Solar	63
Solar radiation data
Pioneer 9	1968-100A	11/8/68	ESMC	Delta E	Solar	63
Solar radiation data
Pioneer E	none	8/27/69	ESMC	Delta L	FTO	67
1st stage hydraulics failure; destroyed by range safety
Pioneer 10	1972-012A	3/3/72	ESMC	Atlas Centaur	SSET	259
Jupiter flyby 12/73; 1st man-made object to leave solar system. Operations were discontinued on 3/31/97 because of power limitations. Spacecraft continues its voyage into deep space.
Pioneer 11	1973-019A	4/6/73	ESMC	Atlas Centaur	SSET	259
Jupiter flyby 12/74; Saturn flyby 9/1/79
Pioneer 12	1978-051A	5/20/78	ESMC	Atlas Centaur	Venus	582
Venus orbiter
Pioneer 13	1978-078A	8/8/78	ESMC	Atlas Centaur	Venus	904
Dropped 4 probes in Venus atmosphere 12/9/78; burned up in atmosphere on same day

Difference Between GSM and 3G

Global System for Mobile communications or GSM is the current and most widely used standard for mobile phones today while 3G is the next generation mobile technology that has begun to replace GSM. 3G is still in its infancy and only has a very small area covered when compared to GSM.

GSM technology has been the most prominent mobile phone technology in the world. Although there are other technologies that are competing with GSM, it has not budged in its dominance. GSM offered a lot of possibilities to the world ofmobile phones like text messaging and even low speed internet access. Further improvements were made with the introduction of GPRS and EDGE that extended the capabilities of GSM networks. Multimedia messaging was added to its list of features allowing subscribers to send pictures, audio clips, and even short video clips to each other. EDGE also increased the speed of mobile internet browsing to Dial-up speeds.

3G is a whole new technology that was introduced as a replacement to the aging GSM technology. It offers substantial improvements over its predecessor in almost all aspects imaginable. For starters, mobile internet speeds for 3G networks starts out at 384kbps which is already within the range of DSL speeds. At the higher end of the 3G spectrum is HSDPA which can achieve speeds of up to 7.2mbps, way faster than what GSM can offer. Theses faster speeds also made it possible to add new features that were unavailable for GSM. One of which is video calling, that allows people to see each other while talking.

The only drawback behind 3G technology is the fact that it is not backward compatible to the older GSM technology. This means that your 3G mobile phones cannot communicate with GSM towers and 2G phones cannot communicate with 3G towers. To preserve backwards compatibility, most telecoms install newer 3G radios while still maintaining the older GSM radios. Mobile phone makers also include 3G support into their phones without removing 2G technologies. This would gradually fade as more and more 3G radios are put up and more 3Gmobile phones are built.

It would only be a matter of time until 3G technologies fully supersede the GSM network, this not a competition but a natural transition from an oldertechnology to a new one. Therefore, it would make sense to consider this when you are purchasing a new mobile phone and get one that already supports 3G technolog.

How to use Remote Desktop

The Remote Desktop Connection utility is a very useful tool, especially if you need to access your work computer at home, or vice-versa. It lets you create a direct connection between two computers, one able to control the other. Here’s how it’s done:

Step 1: Setting up the Remote Computer account

Log in as administrator on the computer you want to access over the connection. Go to Control Panel -> User Accounts and decide which user’s desktop you want to connect to. Click the account and choose Create Password. I suggest you make a strong password to keep out unwanted guests. abc123 definitely isn’t a strong password. You need a password on the remote account or the connection won’t work. Go back to Control Panel and choose System -> Remote (Note: If there is no “System” Section in the Control Panel, type Control Panel/system into the address bar.) Make sure the box Allow Users to Remotely Connect to this Computer is checked and press the button Select Remote Users. Click Add and type the account name(s) you want to connect to and press OK.

Step 2: Finding the IP Address of the Remote Computer

Before you move onto the other one, find out the IP address of the remote computer.

To do this, type cmd into the Run box from the Start Menu and press Run.

Type ipconfig into the command prompt to display the IP address properties.

All you need from here right now is the IP address, so write that down. Now you can log off and move onto the local computer that you want to access the remote one with.

Step 3: Connecting to the Remote Computer

Open Start > All Programs > Accessories > Remote Desktop Connection.

Type in the IP address of the remote computer, (the one you copied earlier) and press Connect.

Now you will be asked for the username and password of the remote account. Enter them and continue.

After a few moments, a full screen window should open up and you should be able to control the remote computer.

If the connection is slow, close it, reopen Remote Desktop Connection and Choose Options before you connect. Set the color and quality a little lower and try again.

10 Tricks With A USB Thumb Drive

Any ordinary USB memory device can do a lot more than you probably thought it could. It can carry programs, encryption and even a full installation of Windows XP! Here is our tenlist for the coolest things you can do with a USB thumb drive:

Take your programs with you

We all know how frustrating it is when we take your files to another computer just to discover that the software required to read the files is not installed.

Here’s the simplest solution – take your programs with you – on your USB thumb drive. Here’s how to do it with Portable Apps:

1. Go to the Portable Apps website and download the installer, choosing the software you want to carry along.

2. Run the installer and install the software to the root of your USB thumb drive.

And you’re done! As soon as you connect your thumb drive into a computer, Portable Apps will open up automatically.

Surf anonymously

With Portable Apps and Firefox, you can surf the web without leaving any trace on the computer you are using. If you want extra security, install a Firefox security plugin such as FoxyProxy. To iput Firefox onto the drive, just copy-paste the Firefox folder from you computer, or install Firefox onto the thumb drive.

Set a program to run automatically (autorun)

Using autorun, you can set a program to start up automatically when you connect the drive to a computer. You can also use the same script for a data CD-ROM. Note that some computers have autorun disabled for security purposes. [Here's how to disable autorun.]

Open up notepad and paste the following script:

[autorun]
ShellExecute=filename
Label=description
UseAutoPlay=1

Make sure you replace filename with the full path to the file. For example, a file called program.exe in a folder called “programs” on the thumb drive would be /programs/program.exe

Replace description with a short description of the program, for example, My Jukebox or Mozilla Firefox.

Save the file as autorun.inf, making sure you select “All Programs” from the save menu, not “Text document”!

Help! I’m lost!

Ever lost a USB drive? Even if you haven’t, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll lose a few during your life. And with all the important information on it, it could be a disaster to have it fall into someone’s hands.

A good idea is to encrypt all the information on the drive, but you would still want it back, wouldn’t you? Luckily, the folks at the Daily Cup Of Tech have come up with a solution.

Save a program called “Help! I’m Lost!” on the drive, that a finder just can’t get around opening. The program opens a message box with your personal “I’m lost” message. It’s a good idea to offer the finder a bigger reward than the drive itself, so that they’ll be interested in contacting you.

Hide the drive inside something

Why not surprise your friends and co-workers by sticking something that looks like a broken USB cable into the computer’s USB drive?

You’ll be sure to get a few shocked faces when you start to play a movie from it.

The guys from Technobuzz.net show us how to do it. (You are gonna need an unbelievably small thumb drive for this…)

Secure your PC

Just like with an RFID badge, you can use a USB drive to lock and unlock a PC. Insert it to begin working and pull it out when you’ve finished, locking the computer. There are several programs for this . Rohos, a commercial program and WiKID, a semi-open source one.

If you really need to secure your computer with a USB drive, I suggest you give Rohos a try, as WiKID is rather complicated.

Portable jukebox

Don’t just carry the music with you, also carry the player! You can install audio programs such as WinAmp and CoolPlayer+ on your thumb drive. Just unextract the ZIP folders to the USB drive.

If you want the jukebox to start up automatically when you connect the memory stick to the computer, use the autorun feature shown tip 3 and point it to the exe of your audio player.

Encrypt your data

If you carry any sensitive indormation on your USB memory stick, a good idea is to encrypt it. Hardware-level encryption will help, but it will cost extra. You can get a free program to encrypt your data just as securely. For this I recommend TrueCrypt, but most others will also do.

You will need admin access on the computer you want to use your encrypted thumb drive on, so this it’s usability a little.

Run a standalone OS for dedicated tasks

The easiest OS to boot from a USB drive is probably Linux. There are many small capacity Linux versions out there that will fit on your drive. The best 3 are Puppy Linux, Damn Small Linux and Webconverger.

Make sure you select a version that needs less space than your USB drive’s maximum, so you have room for files and software.

And this leads us nicely to the final tip…

Run Windows itself from a USB thumb drive
Modifying Windows to work on a USB drive is quite difficult, but luckily there are some tools that will do it for us. Note that you will need a separate Windows license for this, as Microsoft only lets you use one for each single computer, and a USB drive is treated by them like a computer…

What you’ll need:

1. A licensed copy of Windows
2. A USB device, min. 1GB (We recommend a USB hard disk, as a flash memory stick will become unusable after 100000 writing processes. Assuming that only 2 processes are used per second, the drive will last only 60 days with 8 hours of work each day… A hard disk doesn’t have this problem.)