LEGO Mindstorms Space Shuttle

Release Date	April 16th, 2011

Description	Scale model of the NASA Space Shuttle. Integrating 4 NXT flight controllers and 2 remotes, the shuttle can move side to side and move its Canadarm.   Flight control is provided by Hitechnic Accelerometers, Gyroscopes, and color sensors.

General Information	Flight Crew: John Brost Marc-Andre Bazergui Andrew Milluzzi Mission Control: The LEGO Group

Mission	The LEGO® space shuttle Enterprise’s mission is to continue to inspire and encourage children to explore science and math just as the real space shuttles and other NASA projects have inspired countless current and future scientists and engineers.

Website	lmsshuttle photos http://legospace.com http://mindstorms.lego.com

First public appearance was during Yuri's Night Party, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first human spaceflight by Yuri Gagarin and the 30th anniversary of the first space shuttle lift-off. The event was held at the Virginia Air & Space Center, hosted in part by NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.

Here is a video of the event



jump at 0:36 to see the interview with creator Andrew Milluzzi
If you find more pictures or videos please do let us know.

New block in the house : RS485 on NXT-G

Reproduced with permission from Xander's blog I'd Rather Be Building Robots

Give it up for my main man Andy Milluzzi who, with some help from John Hansen, created the world’s first NXT-G block that leverages the NXT’s RS485 communication abilities! Well done.
What does that mean?  Well now you can connect two bricks, back-to-back with a cable connected between their S4 ports and communicate at a blinding 921600 bps!  That’s quite a bit faster than regular Bluetooth and without the overhead of those mailboxes.
This opens up a whole new world of possible sensors! One of them being the new Dexter Industries NXTBees. How cool is that?
You can download the block from here: [LINK]. You will need at least version 1.05 of the LEGO NXT firmware to use this.

see original post here 

PS: looks like this could be quite useful for my W.5 project...