6 March 2010
LPSC 2010 – Day 4: Mars Oceans, Titan Lakes, Astrobiology and Asteroids
Thursday started off with a couple of talks about the possibility of oceans on Mars. The first one, given by Gaetano DiAchille looked at possible locations of deltas all over Mars to try to figure out the water level of a past ocean. Deltas form when a river hits a standing body of water and drops its sediment, so they are a reliable marker of the water level. DiAchille found …
5 March 2010
LPSC 2010 – Day 3: Rover Update, Mafic Mars and Atmospheres
Wednesday started off with a summary of results from the Opportunity rover, given by Steve Squyres. He started off talking about the several iron meteorites discovered in the past year. I thought it was particularly interesting that there are hematite blueberries on top of some of the meteorites: the blueberries are way too big to be lifted by the wind, so that means the meteorite must have been buried and …
3 March 2010
LPSC 2010 – Day 2
Well, I made it to Houston about a day later than expected so I missed all of the monday talks and sessions, but I took notes yesterday and I’ll share some highlights here. The day started off with a series of talks about terrestial planet cryospheres. In other words, ice on Mars and the earth. Robert Grimm gave the first talk, describing his latest model results for groundwater and ice …
28 February 2010
Lunar and Planetary Science Conference 2010
Hi there readers! It’s that time of year again: every March, planetary scientists gather at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference to share all their latest results, and every year I frantically try to keep track of all the cool things I see and report some of them on the blog. This year I’ll be doing the same: as usual I’ll try to keep up with daily posts, but if …
21 February 2010
Reaching out to the Interested Public
Emily Lakdawalla over at the Planetary Society blog posted the other day about a talk that she gave at the Next-generation Suborbital Researchers Conference (NSRC) about how to get the most bang for your buck with public outreach. The main point was that the most successful outreach efforts do not necessarily target The Public as a whole, but rather cater to members of the public that are already passionate about …
17 February 2010
How would you "Open NASA"?
As you may or may not have heard, the White House has issued an “Open Government” directive to all government agencies which requires them to come up with a plan for how they will become more participatory, collaborative and transparent. To help develop this plan, each agency, including NASA, has been given an “IdeaScale” site where members of the public can make suggestions and vote on the suggestions of others. …
15 February 2010
Lasers Shooting Stuff
I posted about lasers last week and mentioned in passing that the US military was working on a giant plane-mounted laser to shoot down missiles. As if on cue, this video was released, showing infrared views of that very laser doing that very thing! And on a related note: good news for mosquito haters out there. The very same technology used to take down missiles is being used on a …
Shuttle Silhouette
Sorry for the lack of updates in the past week. Things are a bit busy right now as I try to crunch numbers in time to finish a poster for a conference and finish a fellowship renewal (luckily they rely on the same results). Meanwhile, enjoy this excellent photo of the space shuttle taken from the ISS.
8 February 2010
Frickin’ Laser Beams: Fact vs Fiction
Last month I spent a week out at Los Alamos National Laboratory vaporizing things with a high powered laser. Now, as I drown in data that I collected out there, I thought I’d take a moment to talk about lasers. When I tell people that I zap things with lasers, I can almost see the mental images flickering behind their eyes. They tend to look something like this: Man, I …
1 February 2010
NASA's New Budget
The internet has been a whirlwind of wailing and gnashing of teeth, interspersed with the occasional optimistic or guarded response, as space advocates respond to Obama’s fiscal year 2011 budget request for NASA. In case you haven’t heard, the main points of the FY2011 budget are nicely summarized in this overview document: Increase of $6.0 billion over 5-years (FY 2011-15) compared to the FY 2010 Budget, for a total of …
