This week’s Carnival of Space is up at the Planetary Society Blog! Alas, I am not in the carnival, I’ve been too busy. I’m afraid things are going to be pretty quiet here for the next week, but consider it the prelude to some really exciting blogging coming up:

Next saturday I’ll be joining my officemates and adviser on a weeklong geology field trip to Arizona, where we will be helping to teach his planetary surface processes class about the geology of the southwest and how it ties in with geology on other planets. We’ll be visiting the Grand Canyon, SP mountain and flow, meteor crater, walnut canyon, lava river cave, navajo dunes, grand falls, the Painted Desert, as well as Northern Arizona University, Arizona State, and the USGS. It’s a great field trip (I went last time the trip was offered, two years ago) and I will do my best to blog about our adventures every day.

After Arizona, I’ll be heading to Houston, TX for five weeks! The first week will be the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, where I’ll be presenting a poster about the Gale crater MSL landing site (which I am currently rushing to finish). Again, I’ll do my best to take good notes and post the latest planetary news here.

After the conference, I’m spending four weeks at Johnson Space Center, shooting rocks with lasers. No, really, I’m not making this up. I’m involved in a project to characterize rocks with Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy so that when MSL gets to Mars and starts zapping rocks with its own laser, ChemCam, we can rapidly interpret the data.

So, stay tuned, but in the meantime, check out the Carnival of Space!