You are browsing the archive for Ryan Anderson.
5 September 2008
Carnival of Space #69
This week’s Carnival of Space is being hosted by Free Space at Discovery News. What are you waiting for? Go! Check it out!
3 September 2008
Hawaii Field Work – Ground Truth
I posted a while back, right before I left to participate in the NASA Planetary Volcanology Field Workshop, describing what exactly I was going to be doing there. Our goal was to study a set of images and come up with a geologic map of the area, and then actually go to that location (something we can’t usually do for other planets) and see how good our geologic maps were. …
2 September 2008
How to Defrost Phoenix
Bad Astronomy brought this amusing Foxtrot comic to my attention (click for the whole thing). Now, to get to work on a proposal to use this to extend the Phoenix mission lifetime by periodically baking off any accumulated CO2 ice…
Science Policy Follow-Up
To follow up on my quick summary of Obama’s answers to the 14 ScienceDebate questions, Cocktail Party Physics (a blog that you should be reading if you don’t already) has an excellent post reflecting on the science and technology policies of both Obama and McCain. Like most posts at that blog it’s quite long, but definitely worth a read.
1 September 2008
The Big Picture: Hubble Rescue
The Big Picture blog has a great collection of photos showing the preparations for the upcoming space shuttle mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope (STS-125). The mission launches in October and is one of the 10 remaining shuttle missions. Hubble repair missions are extremely tricky, but they are also, in my opinion, the best thing that the space shuttle has been used for.
31 August 2008
Obama Answers Top 14 Science Questions
Sciencedebate2008.com has come up with a list of 14 science policy questions for the candidates to answer, and Obama just provided his answers. Here are my notes, highlighting key points in case you don’t have time to read the whole thing: More NSF fellowships Double basic research budgets in next 10 years reduce emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 expand federally funded …
Mars Rovers Twitter!
Following the lead of their younger, hipper cousin Phoenix, the Rovers now have their own Twitter page. Check it often to get the latest rover news!
29 August 2008
Opportunity Update: Out of Victoria!
It’s offical: Opportunity is out of Victoria crater and back on level ground for the first time in almost a year. Next up, the rover will take a look at some cobbles: rocks strewn about the plains of meridiani by distant impacts. For more detail, check out the JPL press release.
27 August 2008
Crescent Mars
Emily has posted some awesome pictures of a crescent Mars that she put together using old Viking data. For some reason, the previous attempts at doing this are pretty horrible looking, but her images look great! She also provides the relevant touched-up data files for you to try making your own images.
Opportunity Update: Leaving Victoria Crater
JPL just put out a press release confirming the plan that the rover team has been aware of for a while now: Opportunity is on its way out of Victoria crater. After a lot of frustratingly difficult driving toward the crater wall at Cape Verde, we have tons of awesome images of the layers in the rock but were unable to get close enough to reach out and touch it. …
