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30 September 2010
The 4th MSL Landing Site Workshop: Day 3 – Engineering and Safety
With the details of all four landing sites on the table, we started day 3 of the meeting by hearing from the engineers and several scientists about the properties of the ellipses, the risks for landing and the capabilities of the landing system. First on the schedule was Mike Watkins, who explained why MSL is so unique in terms of assessing the risk for the landing site because the landing …
29 September 2010
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 …
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 …
3 August 2010
Is Eberswalde Really a Smoking Gun?
The other day in Mars journal club, we took a look at a paper about the “fan” in Eberswalde crater. You may recognize this name: it is one of the four finalist landing sites for MSL. The site was chosen because at the western end of the crater, there is a feature that most Mars scientists consider to be a delta, formed when sediment transported by rivers encountered standing water …
31 July 2010
Big Sky Country
Well folks, I’m headed off to Big Sky Country tomorrow (aka Montana)! I’ll start the week at the MSL camera team meeting, where I will get all sorts of cool news about the MastCam, MAHLI and MARDI cameras which I will not be able to share with you.* After that, the lot of us will pack up and head to Glacier National Park to learn about the geology of the …
1 November 2009
Vote Early and Often!
Remember when I mentioned a few weeks ago that I submitted a blog post about MSL as an action-adventure hero to ScientificBlogging’s science writing competition? Well they have announced the finalists and I’m one of them! From now until November 22, all the finalist posts are open for voting. You can vote for as many entries as you want each day, every day! So that means that you can vote …
30 September 2009
Mars Science Laboratory Instruments: MAHLI
Last time, I talked about the MastCam color cameras on MSL, so it only makes sense to continue with one of the other cameras: the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI). MAHLI will serve the same role on MSL that the microscopic imager on the current MER rovers does: it will provide detailed photos of the soil and rock surfaces acessible by the robotic arm. MAHLI is made by the same …
27 May 2009
MSL is a Curiosity
Well, it looks like the next-generation rover that will be launching to Mars in 2011 (and happens to be the focal point of my PhD thesis) just got a name! Before today it was referred to as the Mars Science Laboratory or ‘MSL‘. But now it will go by the name Curiosity! The name comes from a short essay written by 12-year-old Clara Ma: Curiosity is an everlasting flame that …
