Celebrating Pi Day 2018

Today Wednesday 14 March, the 'Pi in the Sky' challenge took place as PCACS.

This challenge, now in its fifth year was created by the Education Office of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

The challenge featured math problems to calculate for Martian earthquakes, helium rain on Jupiter and the rotation rate of the first interstellar visitor ever discovered, asteroid 'Oumuamua. The topics of last year's Pi Day challenge included craters with butterfly-shaped ejecta, or tossed material, and the total solar eclipse.

Pi is a number whose digits go on forever, but it's most popularly known by the first three: 3.14 (hence March 14). It is a mathematical constant often denoted by the symbol π. Pi comes in handy when determining the circumference or the surface area of a round celestial body. It also helps engineers and scientists program the precise orbits of satellites and spacecraft.