Table of Contents
I'm a novelist and have an interest in space science and physics. I've been a programmer for more than 40 years and I like reviewing new and up-and-coming authors.
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Updates
The physical Martian clock… I have to come up with a better name for it than that. PiMars! Yup, I like that. The PiMars clock was up and running and displaying data at a crucial time. It was just a couple of hours before the end of the day at the InSight location, and as luck would have it, I had it display time at that place.
A few hours later I noticed the clock was still saying it was (mission) sol 569, despite the fact that it was after midnight there and into a new sol. Checking the website clocks revealed the same issue. Checking the code I could see there was a narrow window when this error could be observed - as soon as AMT ticked over to the next sol, the error would be resolved and therefore hidden. Ok, it was a 9 hour window, but how often do you think I spend 9 hrs staring at that part of the Mars Weather page?
Anyway, it's fixed now in the Mars Weather page and PiMars.
NASA Image of the Day
Date: Sun 11th May, 2025
Title: The Surface of Venus from Venera 14
Info Report
N.B. This page gets bumped every now and again when new info is added.
I've been pruning some of the stale articles and blog posts. If anything is broken, please let me know.
International Space Station
This page has a portal through which you can view the current location of the International Space Station, updating in real-time. The tracker itself comes from the European Space Agency (ESA).
There is also a handy link to get email notifications direct from NASA when the ISS is visible in your night sky.
Automatic Weather Updates
The Mars Weather page is now 99.99% automatic, with rebuilds regularly throughout the day. The 0.001% that's not automated? Once a week I have to update the image that shows the relative positions of the inner planets. I think I can manage that 
Incidentally, the automation software fully rebuilds the page from the ground up, and it seems to have fixed my inability to edit the page through the wiki front-end. Maybe I didn't close off a tag or something and it upset the wiki (but not enough to stop it from generating and displaying the page).
Incidentally, the weather data is stored in a couple of sqlite3 files, so if anybody wants copies, just ask in the comments below.