Entirely overjoyed Pi Day! Here is how the infamous math conception helped NASA’s Perseverance rover land on Mars

If you’re no longer properly appreciative of pi, NASA is right here to inspire. 

Pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, a mathematical fixed that rounds off to 3.14. The actual quantity goes on forever, but two decimal places will suffice for most of us. 

Pi is infamous and most well-known enough to be well-known by nerds all the arrangement in which thru the arena — on March 14 (3/14) in the United States and on July 22 in Europe and other places that write dates in the month-day-300 and sixty five days format. (22 July in such programs is 22/7, a division spot that works out to about 3.14.)

Linked: 10 gorgeous information about pi

And NASA would now not restrict its celebration of the fixed to a single day. 

“NASA makes exhaust of pi on on day by day basis basis!” company officials wrote in a enlighten on Friday (March 12). 

“Pi is instrumental in developing the size of parachutes to land on the Crimson Planet,” they added. “Definitely, pi helps engineers pick how gigantic the parachute wants to be in repeat to generate the lope wanted to insensible down craft landing on Mars. It additionally helps researchers diagram and explore Earth and planets in our hang and other picture voltaic programs.”

NASA officials embellished that replace with a visual inspire — a June 2017 picture of a parachute test in a wind tunnel at NASA’s Ames Look at Center in Silicon Valley, California. The parachute being tested shared a hang with the particular person that helped the Perseverance rover land on Mars closing month. 

That 70.5-foot-wide (21.5 meters) supersonic chute opened about four minutes after Perseverance hit the head of the Martian ambiance on Feb. 18. And you would additionally gape that dramatic otherworldly deployment, thanks to video the rover captured correct thru its descent.

Mike Wall is the writer of “Out There” (Huge Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book relating to the gape for alien existence. Put together him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Put together us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Fb.