You are browsing the archive for Ryan Anderson.
29 September 2010
The 4th MSL Landing Site Workshop: Day 2 – Holden Crater
The second site that we discussed yesterday was Holden Crater. Ross Irwin gave the first, overview presentation. Holden is a 155 kilometer crater that formed right in the middle of a huge drainage system that spans from the Argyre basin to the northern plains, and at Holden you would land on a bunch of coalescing alluvial fans on the western crater floor and then drive southeast to access some nice …
The 4th MSL Landing Site Workshop: Day 2 – Mawrth
Holy cow. Today was jam-packed with interesting stuff about Mawrth Vallis, Holden Crater and Eberswalde Crater! I took tons of notes, and I will try to use those to assemble a coherent picture of what was presented and discussed today. But if you’re too impatient to wait for me to work through those and post the more coherent summary, here are the notes in their raw and unedited form. Read …
28 September 2010
4th MSL Landing Site Workshop: Day 1
It has begun! Today was the first of a three day workshop in which the Mars science community (not just those directly involved in the MSL mission) gathers together and hashes out what we know and what we don’t know about the four finalist MSL landing sites. For me the week actually started yesterday at the MSL team meeting, where we got lots of updates on the various aspects of …
24 September 2010
The 4th MSL Landing Site Workshop
Well folks, I’m off to Pasadena to help the Mars community decide where to send its next rover. Long-time readers will recall that i’ve been to a couple of these things before and they’re always fascinating. I was going to post a reminder of what the four finalist sites are, with pros and cons and all that, but it turns out I don’t have to! My friend Lisa Grossman, a …
21 September 2010
Meteorite Ahead!
There has been a flurry of emails going around among the MER team about a certain rock ahead of the Opportunity rover that looks like it may be yet another meteorite. It certainly doesn’t look much like the local meridiani rocks, which are the light-toned patches in the photo above. Meteorites are interesting because they provide information about the weathering environment on mars. We know that Mars is all rusty, …
The Science of Starcraft: Supernovae and Gauss Rifles
I’ve got two new posts up at The Science of Starcraft! The first tackles the difference between supernovae and novae. The words are often used interchangeably in sci-fi, but they are (usually) very different phenomena. Plus, I love telling the story of nucleosynthesis and stellar evolution, and this was a good excuse. The second post is sort of a sequel to my previous post about railguns. This time I look …
16 September 2010
Gale Crater Geomorphology Paper – Published!
Big news folks! The huge paper that I’ve been working on for the last couple years is finally, unbelievably, published! Even better for you, it is published at the Mars journal, which is an open-access journal. Just head on over and you can download all 53 pages of pure, distilled Science! In case you don’t want to wade through that many pages (and almost as many figures) of Mars geomorphology …
12 September 2010
Carnival of Space #169
Hey everyone, the 169th Carnival of Space is up at Next Big Future! Go take a look. Now.
11 September 2010
Jaded by Mars Organics
So, you may have heard the news making the rounds last week that a new analysis of the Viking data suggests there may actually be organics and (dare I even say it?) life on mars! Yawn. Consider me underwhelmed. The gist of the story is this: A long-standing mystery in Mars science has been why the Viking instruments were unable to detect any organic molecules on Mars, not even at …
9 September 2010
Donors Choose
Donors Choose is a charity organization that allows teachers to post requests for supplies that they can’t afford and allows donors to (get this!) choose which teachers to donate to. Some requests are for basic school supplies, others are for computers or video cameras or other big-ticket items that a teacher’s district can’t afford. It’s a great organization, and you should go check out the projects and donate to the …
