You are browsing the archive for Ryan Anderson.
6 August 2012
WE LANDED ON MARS
We made it! Curiosity is safely on the surface of Mars and is returning some spectacular data!
Dare Mighty Things
“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”
5 August 2012
Sol -1: Planetfest, and ChemCam team rocks the house
Today I managed to start off getting a bit of work done, then headed down to Planetfest, where I helped out with the Google Mars station for a while, giving tours of Gale crater and answering questions. In the afternoon, I was on a panel moderated by Emily Lakdawalla with a bunch of other young scientists and engineers, talking about how we got involved in space exploration. The panel …
4 August 2012
Sol -2: Loose ends, interviews, landing site bingo, and Pixar
With this blog entry, I’m switching over to a more journal-like style that I will hopefully use throughout the mission. When there are Big Science Ideas to talk about related to the mission, I will of course try to explain them in their own posts, but I am also going to be doing posts like this one (although likely not usually as long), sharing what my day was like, what the ups and downs were, and hopefully providing a window into what it’s like to be involved in the mission without crossing the line into that which must not be blogged.
3 August 2012
MSL: Mars Action Hero
You know, I’m tired of hearing about how the Mars Exploration Rovers are so cute, and spunky, but their successor Mars Science Lab is big and ugly. MSL isn’t supposed to be cute, it’s supposed to be awesome.
Just how awesome, you ask? I’ll tell you how awesome.
5 Ways Landing on Mars is like Having a Baby
As we draw closer and closer to Curiosity’s landing, I can’t help but think that there are some important similarities between landing on Mars and having a baby. Before you ask: no, I don’t actually know what it is like to have a kid. For that matter, I also have never experienced the landing of a Mars mission that I have been involved with. But in both cases, I know enough …
2 August 2012
Curiosity is Going Home
This morning when I was walking the dog, I paused to appreciate the sight of the early sunlight shining through the dew-drenched grass and sparkling on the dripping ponderosa pine branches. It was a nice peaceful moment, and it made me think of what a different world we’re sending Curiosity to. The amount of liquid water that I saw glimmering on the grass this morning probably hasn’t been seen anywhere …
1 August 2012
5 days…
I don’t have much time to post since I am currently wrestling some particularly beastly paper revisions that need to be done by the end of the week before my life gets really complicated. But I wanted to mention a few things here before I dive back into revisions: Curiosity has already switched over to its Entry, Descent and Landing sequence. From the @MarsCuriosity twitter feed: “Timeline activated. Bleep-bop. I’m running …
28 July 2012
Blogging MSL
You guys. MSL lands in 8 days! My brain is having trouble grasping how soon that is. Later this week I pack up and drive to Pasadena, where I’ll be sharing an apartment with my supervisor and working on the mission. I expect it to be exciting and exhausting and fascinating and of course, I want to share it all here on the blog.
Except I can’t.
18 July 2012
MSL Care Package – Thank You Dunoon Students!
I had a very nice surprise when I came in to work today: a large box from Dunoon Grammar School in Scotland! A while back, Hugh O’Donnell, an English teacher at Dunoon contacted me, inquiring if I might be willing to answer some student questions about MSL. He is organizing an awesome interdisciplinary project in which students produce a piece of Mars-themed writing. They will also have Mars-themed lessons in …
