10 July 2009
Solar System Creator
As I mentioned last month, on top of research and grad school duties, I’m in the process of planning out a sci-fi novel. It began with the month-long outlining challenge “Midsommer Madness” over at the Liberty Hall writing site, and I am continuing with it in my spare time. I am trying to make my novel grounded in reality whenever possible. It is set in a known star system, 55 …
6 July 2009
Student Questions about Mars Exploration
A few months ago, a class of 6th graders at JFK Middle School in Hudson, MA contacted the astronomy department at Cornell. They were doing an egg-drop project, modeled after the Mars rovers, and their teacher had them each write questions to Steve Squyres about the rover mission. Steve was out of town (and is always extremely busy), but he suggested that many of the questions could be answered by …
4 July 2009
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter: at the Moon and Returning Data!
I was completely delinquent about reporting this due to the craziness that was my June, but the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter launched on June 18 and has arrived at the moon and is already returning data. As a Mars scientist that is amazing to me. If it were a Mars probe, there would be ~7 months between launch and orbital insertion, but with the moon, it only takes a few days. …
Now Back to our Regularly Scheduled Programming
As of yesterday at noon, I am happy to report that I passed my A-exam and now have a M.S. in Astronomy, and am a PhD candidate! That’s right, I somehow managed to convince my committee that shooting rocks with lasers and looking at landing sites on Mars is worthy of a PhD. Being grilled about the fundamentals of your science by Jim Bell (my adviser and lead scientist for …
1 July 2009
Volcanic Explosion Seen From Space
This is completely awesome: (Courtesy of Ian O’Neil and Richard Drumm)
28 June 2009
Buzz Says: Aim for Mars
Buzz Aldrin, of walking-on-the-freakin’-moon fame recently wrote an editorial for CNN about the future of NASA. I’ll let you follow this link to the full article, but here are a couple of excerpts: More than just exploring a hostile new world, Apollo 11 was about bold vision and great risk, about the obstacles a great nation could overcome with dedication, courage and teamwork. It was about choosing a goal that …
25 June 2009
Surreal-looking HiRISE Picture of the Day
I don’t have time to write a full post since I am busy trying to get a presentable outline of my PhD thesis prepared to show to my committee next week. So in the mean time, enjoy this beautiful and bizarre HiRISE image of defrosting terrain on Mars. Click the image or this link to go to the HiRISE page and see the full version.
22 June 2009
Carnival of Space #108 : Solstice Edition!
Another week, another carnival of space! This one is special though because yesterday was the northern summer solstice! Go check out the Carnival over at Starts With a Bang, and enjoy the long hours of daylight (if you live in the North) or go have a snowball fight (if you live in the south).
20 June 2009
Fun with Lasers
Ladies and gentlemen: I just spent a week vaporizing rocks with a laser! Now, after your first thought of “Whoa, awesome” wears off, you may be wondering why I would do such a thing. Because it’s fun, obviously. But also because the Mars Science Laboratory rover “Curiosity” will be doing the same thing on Mars. The ChemCam instrument uses an infrared laser to shoot pulses of light at rocks. The …
15 June 2009
Carnival of Space #107
After three flights and a nice nighttime drive during which I got to watch a thunderstorm raging off on the horizon, lighting up the clouds like paper lanterns, I am in Los Alamos! I am here all week doing lab work: I finally get to shoot rocks with lasers! I’ll post some more info about why we are attacking rocks with sci-fi weapons at some point this week, but for …
