5 August 2012
Good luck to Curiosity and the MSL teams!
Posted by Jessica Ball
You’ve probably been reading exciting things about tonight’s landing from my fellow AGU Geoblogger, Ryan Anderson of the Martian Chronicles. He’s been doing a fantastic job of covering the upcoming landing (at 1:31 AM EDT tomorrow morning, or 10:31 PM tonight for the folks at JPL), and I’ve been following his posts with fascination. But I’ve also got another reason to be interested: Danny Krysak, a former UB grad student and one of my good friends, is now working at Malin Space Science Systems and is part of the camera team for Curiosity! He’s every bit as excited about tonight, and I wanted to take the chance to wish both Danny and Ryan a fantastic (and successful) landing!
The "Robot Geologist and Chemist" that will hopefully be landing safely tonight, from NASA's Curiosity Image Gallery (NASA/JPL-Caltech, be landing safely tonight, from NASA's Curiosity Image Gallery (NASA/JPL-Caltech, be landing safely tonight, from NASA's Curiosity Image Gallery (NASA/JPL-Caltech, http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia15791.html)
For those of you who want the social media side of things as well as the NASA Broadcast (http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html), there’s also a Twitter feed (@MarsCuriosity) and Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/MarsCuriosity). Set your alarm clocks (or get your caffeinated drink of choice ready) for tonight!
Jessica Ball is a volcanologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, researching volcanic hydrothermal systems and stability, and doing science communication for the California Volcano Observatory. She previously worked at the Geological Society of America's Washington DC Policy Office, learning about the intersection of Earth science and legislative affairs. Her Mendenhall postdoc and PhD focused on how water affects the stability of volcanoes, and involved both field investigations and numerical modeling applications. Her blogging covers a range of topics, from her experiences in academic geosciences to science outreach and communication to her field and lab work in volcanology.
It’s a real Sunday night for science geeks Jessica. I sure have my fingers crossed for Ryan and Curiosity. This can turn into a truly inspirational event for Junior High and HS students.
It sure is! It still just blows my mind that we can do science on other planets – and that my friends are a part of it!
Thanks for the well wishes, Jess! And thanks for being there live-via-text message during EDL, too! It’s always better to share an experience like this with friends, even if they are on the opposite end of the country 😀
If you or any of your readers ever have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask! This is going to be a great mission, and I can’t even imagine the things we are going to discover on it!
Oh, you’re on. Talk to your media relations people because you’re definitely doing an interview 🙂
I watched the Mars Science Laboratory landing on the NASA website when it was happening- really exciting stuff!! A bit nail-biting, too, especially since so many steps had to happen in the right sequence with little help from the landing team on Earth.
I wonder whether we will see many more missions like Curiosity. They tell us that NASA is running out of the supplies of plutonium required for the RTGs used by deep space probes, and solar power is really not up for ambitious proposals like searching Europa for life or landing a balloon on Titan. Small solid core fission reactors have flown in space before- mainly in Soviet intelligence satellites- so there are options beyond RTGs. Don’t forget the solid core NERVA rockets, either. I always loved Chesley Bonestell’s moonship…