Cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin and astronaut Dan Burbank launched to ISS aboard a Soyuz TMA-2 spacecraft in November, accompanied by a plush Angry Bird "zero gravity indicator" (Credits: NASA).
In the first ever video game to be announcement from space, ISS astronaut Don Pettit explained some of the physics essential to winning the new game Angry Birds in Space. Complete with the plush angry bird that launched with cosmonaut Shkaplerov as a gift from his daughter, Pettit used bungee cords and a balloon “pig” to explain how gravity affects an object’s trajectory. The space variant of the popular video game was produced by Rovio with collaboration from NASA. NASA hopes that the game will create an educational opportunity for young people to explore the physics of gravity in a creative setting. The game is scheduled to launch to the public on March 22.
![A trajectory analysis that used a computational fluid dynamics approach to determine the likely position and velocity histories of the foam (Credits: NASA Ref [1] p61).](https://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/fluid-dynamics-trajectory-analysis-50x50.jpg)
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