Heres Archives — Casefun

It Has Been 30-Years Since the Hubble Space Telescope’s Servicing Mission 1, Here’s a Look Back

Photo credit: NASA
NASA / ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope celebrates the 30th anniversary of its Servicing Mission 1, which began on Dec. 2, 1993, when the space shuttle Endeavour launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This telescope was specially designed to be serviced in space with modular components that astronauts can simply slide in and replace, without having to worry about complex repairs.

What components did the astronauts replace on Hubble? Its Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) and Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR), along with other critical upgrades. The most interesting component was probably COSTAR, a refrigerator-sized device boasting a constellation of mirrors, some merely coin-sized, intended to correct and redirect light to the telescope’s other cameras as well as spectrographs. When all was said and done, astronauts performed five extravehicular activities, totaling over 35 hours.

LEGO Icons NASA Space Shuttle Discovery 10283 Model Building Set - Spaceship Collection with Hubble...

LEGO Icons NASA Space Shuttle Discovery 10283 Model Building Set – Spaceship Collection with Hubble…

LEGO NASA Space Set – This adult LEGO set features the Space Shuttle Discovery and the Hubble Space Telescope from NASA’s 1990 STS-31 mission,…
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The sense that you got was everybody was looking at the servicing and repair of the Hubble Space Telescope as the mission that could prove NASA’s worth … There was this overarching focus and pressure on the success of this mission,” said Richard Covey, Servicing Mission 1 Astronaut.

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Author
Jackson Chung

A technology, gadget and video game enthusiast that loves covering the latest industry news. Favorite trade show? Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

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NUCDeck is a DIY Handheld Gaming PC, Here’s a Hands-On Look

NUCDeck is a DIY handheld gaming PC by CNCDan that you can build at home using off-the-shelf components. It’s built around a NUC (Next Unit of Computing) motherboard and powered by a 7th Intel Gen Core i5 NUC processor as well as 16GB of RAM.

Other features include a 7-inch (1024 x 600) DWIN capactive touchscreen with up to 700 nits maximum brightness, a Raspberry Pi Pico-base USB interface for the controls, and an MPU6050 3-axis gyroscope / 3-axis accelerometer. Oh, you’ll also need a 3D printer to fabricate the housing and buttons. It should be powerful enough to run most AAA games as well as emulate most classic consoles (GameCube, Wii, PlayStation, etc.). Get the plans here.

There are two different versions of the buttons, membrane and clicky. The Membrane buttons are shorter and are designed to be used with silicone membranes,” said CNCDan.

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Author
Bill Smith

When it comes to cars, video games or geek culture, Bill is an expert of those and more. If not writing, Bill can be found traveling the world.

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Atari Pong was Released On This Day in 1972, Here’s a Look Back

Photo credit: Wikipedia
Atari Pong was released on this day (November 29) in 1972 and some may not know that the game was developed by engineer Allan Alcorn as a training exercise assigned to him by company co-founder Nolan Bushnell. Ted Dabney, the second Atari co-founder, was so surprised by the quality of Alcorn’s work that he decided to manufacture the game for release in arcades.

This two-dimensional game essentially simulates table tennis, where the player controls an in-game paddle by moving it vertically across the left or right side of the screen. A second player controls a paddle on the opposing side and the goal is to reach eleven points before their opponent. Points are gained when one fails to return the ball to the other, similar to other electronic tennis games that Bushnell had played before developing Pong.

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Bushnell and Alcorn installed the Pong prototype at Andy Capp’s Tavern during August 1972 near the bar’s other entertainment machines: a jukebox, pinball machines, as well as Computer Space. After seeing its success, Bushnell embarked on a business trip to Chicago to demonstrate Pong to executives at Bally and Midway Manufacturing. Ultimately, it was decided that the game would be more profit for Atari to manufacture rather than license.
[Sources: 1 | 2]

Author
Bill Smith

When it comes to cars, video games or geek culture, Bill is an expert of those and more. If not writing, Bill can be found traveling the world.

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Mario Kart Double Dash Celebrates 20th Anniversary, Here’s a Look Back at the 3D Polygonal Masterpiece

Nintendo released Mario Kart Double Dash on November 7, 2003 in Japan, and this 3D polygonal masterpiece most certainly deserves a retrospective. Unlike Mario Kart 64, which only used polygons for the environments and 2D sprites for the racers, Double Dash is the first game in the Mario Kart series to use 3D polygons for the characters.

What didn’t change was the gameplay where players race against each other on Mario-themed tracks, but it did introduce a number of new gameplay features like co-op gameplay with two riders per kart. That’s right, one player drives the kart and the other uses the power-up items. Either player can switch at any time, making Double Dash the only game in the Mario Kart series to allow cooperative gameplay so far. It supports LAN play using the Nintendo GameCube Broadband Adapter, enabling up to 16 players to compete simultaneously.

The familiar Grand Prix mode lets you race against 7 (or 6) computer-controlled teams in a series of predetermined courses. Players can select from 3 different engine size classes: 50cc, 100cc, and 150cc. There is a fourth unlockable class, Mirror Mode, that lets the player race through a mirrored version of the tracks with 150cc kart. When in Versus mode, players can choose any course and race against up to 4 local (or 15 LAN) opponents with custom rules like changing the item frequency. As of 2023, 6.96-million copies of Mario Kart Double Dash have been sold worldwide, making it a commercial success.
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Author
Bill Smith

When it comes to cars, video games or geek culture, Bill is an expert of those and more. If not writing, Bill can be found traveling the world.

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Valve Steam Deck OLED Hits Stores on November 16, Here’s a Hands-On Review

The Valve Steam Deck OLED is officially hitting stores on November 16. Available in in 512GB ($549) and 1TB ($649) variants, this handheld gaming PC now features a 7.4″ OLED screen with a 90Hz refresh rate, a 6nm APU, 6400 MT/s memory, Wi-Fi 6E connectivity, as well as a 50Whr battery for up to 12-hours of continuous use on a single charge.

Even with a larger fan and updated thermals to help the Steam Deck OLED run cooler, it only weighs in at 30g, or 5% lighter than the LCD model, due to the screen. That’s not all, the 1TB models (including Limited Edition) come bundled with an exclusive case with a removable liner, while all of the rear case screws are now Torx type, which makes disassembly / reassembly a breeze without impacting structural integrity.

An OLED screen with larger picture, better battery life, faster WiFi—on top of world class ergonomics and an intuitive console-like experience,” said the company.

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Author
Bill Smith

When it comes to cars, video games or geek culture, Bill is an expert of those and more. If not writing, Bill can be found traveling the world.

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Sony PlayStation 2 Celebrates 23rd Anniversary of North American Release, Here’s a Look Back

On October 26, 2000, the Sony PlayStation 2 was released in North America, and since then, the game console has sold nearly 158 million units worldwide. What set it apart from its main competitors, the Nintendo GameCube, Microsoft Xbox, and SEGA Dreamcast, was the Sony / Toshiba developed Emotion Engine processor.

Aside from the 64-bit R5900-based “Emotion Engine” consisting of eight separate units, it also came equipped with a Graphics Synthesiser boasting a fillrate of 2.4 gigapixels per second, and 32MB of RDRAM. Similar to the Dreamcast’s Visual Memory Unit (VMU), the PlayStation 2 memory card features an 8 megabyte (MB) capacity, complete with MagicGate encryption. During its 13-year run, there were over 4,000 games released worldwide and over 1.5 billion copies sold.

One interesting fact is that besides the “fat” and slimline” models, there was also a 22-inch HD-ready Sony TV that had a built-in PlayStation 2 console, called the Bravia KDL-22PX300. That’s right, it also offered four HDMI ports, three USB sockets, VGA / component inputs and an integrated Freeview tuner with an Ethernet connection for IPTV viewing. Most surprising of all, it retailed for just $243 USD at the time of its release in 2010.
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Author
Bill Smith

When it comes to cars, video games or geek culture, Bill is an expert of those and more. If not writing, Bill can be found traveling the world.

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