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20 December 2009
AGU 2009 – Day 3: Venus and the Moon
I’m splitting day 3 into two posts because there were so many interesting sessions. Stay tuned for the second post about astrobiology and society. But for now, Venus and the moon! I started the day off at the Venus session. One of the first talks I heard was by Cedric Gillman about the history of water on Venus. He suggested a very thick primordial H2O atmosphere with a surface pressure …
More AGU Posts Coming Soon
Apologies for the delay on posting about AGU. During the conference I had woefully little time to actually sit down and turn my chicken-scratch notes into something approaching coherence. I did a big chunk of that on my red-eye flight home and I’ll be posting them later today. So, stay tuned!
17 December 2009
AGU 2009 – Day 2
I started off day 2 of AGU at a couple of lunar talks showing off data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Unfortunately, I missed the early sessions about the high-res cameras, but the bright side was that I learned abount some instruments I was less familiar with. First was the Lunar Orbital Laser Altimeter – LOLA. A similar instrument on Mars Global Surveyor, MOLA, revolutionized our view of Mars. The …
16 December 2009
AGU 2009 – Day 1
For those not familiar with the conference, the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union is a terrifyingly, overwhelmingly large conference. Each year, something like 16,000 geoscientists descend on San Francisco to share their work. It is also one of the major planetary science conferences, so a lot of new results are first presented here. This year, the first talks that I checked out on Monday were about radar observations …
12 December 2009
Realistic Space Battles and a Blog About Craters
Two quick links to hold you over until my AGU coverage starts on Monday. First up, Joe Shoer has a great post on his blog about what space battles might actually be like. This should be required reading for sci-fi authors, especially those with hard sci-fi leanings. Second, Jim Richardson, a researcher here at the Cornell Astronomy Dept. has started a new blog about impact craters. One of his first …
8 December 2009
Carnival of Space #132!
Hey, check it out, it’s the carnival of space! Things will be pretty quiet around here this week because I’m a bit preoccupied with a two-page abstract for next year’s Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (due Thursday) and putting together a poster for the American Geophysical Union conference next week. I can only imagine the LPSC coordinators cackling with glee as they scheduled the abstract deadline the week before AGU. …
1 December 2009
Life on Mars?!
On August 6, 1996 NASA announced that scientists at the Johnson Space Center had found evidence for life on Mars, and everybody went crazy. Yesterday, NASA announced two new papers by the same scientists at the Johnson Space Center claiming that they have found strong evidence of life on Mars. For the most part, there hasn’t been much of a reaction. No presidential press conferences, and only a few headlines. …
30 November 2009
Rings around the Earth – Implications
Last week I posted a video that speculates what it would look like if the Earth had rings like Saturn. Well, over at Quantum Rocketry, Joe Shoer has two excellent follow-up posts. First he calculated what the rings would really look like with gaps caused by Earth’s moons rather than just copying and pasting Saturn’s rings. Here’s a simulated image, but you should check out the full post for more …
25 November 2009
Lava Tubes on the Moon!
Ever wonder how astronauts on the moon are going to avoid deadly space radiation? One option is to live in caves, and luckily the Kaguya team has found one! Read more about it in my article over at Universe Today.
24 November 2009
Take-out is not an Option
What would happen if the Apollo 13 crew cooked thanksgiving dinner at Gene Kranz’s house? Probably something like this:
