More Pi, Please: Here Are NASA's Pi Day Challenge Answers

By Sarah Lewin
published

NASA's fourth annual Pi Day Challenge
NASA's fourth annual Pi Day Challenge asks participants to propose solutions to problems about Martian craters, the size of the moon's shadow, a Saturn orbit and distant exoplanets. (Image credit: NASA)

If you celebrated Pi Day last week by solving space math questions from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, head over to the JPL website — answers are online! 

The NASA questions, which were aimed at the sixth grade to high school level, called on pi to judge craters on Mars, measure the surface area on Earth that darkens from an eclipse, track Cassini's upcoming dive into Saturn and test the potential habitability of the many planets around TRAPPIST-1.

You can see the solutions here (and the problems higher up on that page), or scroll down for NASA's problem and solution posters.

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com. 

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Sarah Lewin
Sarah Lewin
Associate Editor

Sarah Lewin started writing for Space.com in June of 2015 as a Staff Writer and became Associate Editor in 2019 . Her work has been featured by Scientific American, IEEE Spectrum, Quanta Magazine, Wired, The Scientist, Science Friday and WGBH's Inside NOVA. Sarah has an MA from NYU's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program and an AB in mathematics from Brown University. When not writing, reading or thinking about space, Sarah enjoys musical theatre and mathematical papercraft. She is currently Assistant News Editor at Scientific American. You can follow her on Twitter @SarahExplains.