You are browsing the archive for Ryan Anderson.
18 May 2009
Weird Rover Prototypes
Last week when the news about Spirit being stuck in the sand came out, my friend Lisa Grossman, a science writing intern at Wired, contacted me to see if I had any ideas for a fresh angle on the story rather than just repeating the press release. I suggested that she check out some of the awesome rover prototypes that JPL is working on and find out how future rovers …
14 May 2009
The Problem with NASA TV
I have a problem with NASA TV: it’s boring! This has been a pet-peeve of mine for quite a while, but with all of the excitement about the current Hubble repair mission, I have been reminded just how bad NASA TV is. Think about it. Right now, as I write this, the astronauts are suiting up and preparing for a spacewalk to begin repairing the Hubble space telescope. They are …
12 May 2009
Ups And Downs for Spirit Rover
Recently, Spirit has had some very good news and some very bad news. The good news is that we just had a huge cleaning event, with high winds blowing the solar panels clean so that we are getting power levels that we haven’t seen in years! The bad news is that this occurred as Spirit got stuck in deep, soft sand. Last week we were commanding drives of tens of …
11 May 2009
Hubble Repair Launches Today!
In a little over five hours from now, seven astronauts will be blasted into space for the final Hubble repair mission. I could write all about it, but Mike Brown posted a wonderful entry about the mission, so I will just post a teaser and direct you to his blog, Mike Brown’s Planets: This week, for the sake of astronomy, seven people will strap themselves on to the top of …
9 May 2009
Review: Star Trek
Last night, I and my thirty closest friends (much of the Cornell astronomy department) visited the movie theater to watch the new Star Trek movie. The overall verdict: it was good! But of course, as huge nerds and astronomers, after the movie we spent a good twenty minutes standing in the halls of the theater blocking traffic and vigorously discussing all aspects of the movie. In general I liked it …
6 May 2009
"Alien Skull" on Mars
Are you kidding?! Guys. That’s a rock. A chunk of vesicular basalt to be specific. As far as pareidolia goes, it’s not even very good! I had to stare for a while before I saw a face. The human brain loves to see familiar shapes in everything, so it’s pretty easy to find examples of rocks on Mars that look like anything you want. Here, take a look at this …
5 May 2009
Comic: Depressing Statistics
Today’s Daisy Owl comic is about the cost of a human mission to Mars. Click for the whole comic:
4 May 2009
We live in the future
I often say (or at least think to myself) that we live in the future. Especially when I’m traveling. It’s constantly amazing to me that I can get anywhere in the world in less than a day. I can make a routine trip out to California for a conference, when 150 years ago that would be the journey of a lifetime, and would involve diseases and caulking wagons to cross …
Fly me to the moon
My adviser Jim Bell has a guest post up over at the Planetary Society blog about the upcoming Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission. LRO will be able to take pictures of the lunar surface at 50 centimeters per pixel, and will return 20 Terabytes of data! That’s more than 100 times more data than any other planetary mission! So, go take a look at what Jim thinks that sort of data …
30 April 2009
Sexy NASA Jets
Remember a couple weeks ago when I posted about how cool it was to ride my bike to work past the two NASA jets in front of Johnson Space Center? Well, NASA just released an awesome photo of two of the same type of jets doing a flyby of the shuttle on the launch pad! A few years ago I got to visit Ellington Field in Texas, where these jets …
