26 April 2009
Discoveries in Planetary Science
The Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society just released several short sets of slides summarizing recent important discoveries in planetary science that aren’t yet in textbooks. They are very nice, easy to understand summaries so I encourage you to check them out. The topics so far are: Mars Methane, Extrasolar Planet Imaging, The Chaotic Early Solar System, Mars Sulfur Chemistry, and Mercury Volcanism. Follow those links to …
23 April 2009
Spirit and Opportunity in the Robot Hall of Fame
On Tuesday, day 1884 of the Mars Exploration Rover mission, Spirit and Opportunity were inducted into Carnegie Mellon’s Robot Hall of Fame . Who else made the cut? Everyone’s favorite Austrian-accented T-800. So it’s settled: Spirit and Opportunity are officially as badass as the Terminator. The fact that they were inducted with along with the floor-cleaning Roomba, however, makes the honor slightly less cool (I mean, that robot really sucks).
22 April 2009
The Ares Launch Vehicles: How We're Going Back to the Moon
I just came across this excellent video describing the Ares rockets that will be replacing the shuttle and taking us back to the moon (and possibly to near-Earth asteroids and Mars). I can’t seem to get it to embed, but here’s the link, and a blurb: “Imagine a rocket the size of a small skyscraper. Now imagine shooting it into the air with so much force that it goes from …
The Pale Blue Dot
What better Earth day message is there than this? Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer …
21 April 2009
Cassini Questions Answered
I got a bunch of questions about the BigPicture feature on the Cassini extended mission from an “enthusiastic” commenter, with whom I happen to be related (Hi mom!), and I thought I would dedicate a post to answering them. 1. How does a Jovian equinox work? Start by reviewing how one on earth works. Well, the pictures are of Saturn, not Jupiter, but that doesn’t really matter since equinoxes work …
Big Picture: Cassini's Extended Mission
The Big Picture, the Boston Globe’s photojournalism blog, does it again! This week they have a spectacular set of images of Saturn and its sattellites from the Cassini extended mission. Well worth a look. I especially liked the images showing Saturn’s upper atmosphere acting like a lens, causing the rings to apparently bend as they approach the planet. Did you know that the Earth’s atmosphere does the same thing? Sunrise …
19 April 2009
Impressive Arecibo
Betsey over at the ALFALFA Survey Blog just posted about visiting Arecibo and how jaw-droppingly impressive the telescope is. Her pictures are spectacular, so you should go check them out! Here’s a teaser:
Carnival of Space #99
Do you like space? Do you like bread? Well hey, what a coincidence! This week’s carnival comes to you in the form of a recipe for yummy bread, over at Alice’s Astro Info! Go check it out!
15 April 2009
Watching out for Dust Storms
NASA just sent out this press release discussing the various ways that we watch out for dust storms that might be dangerous to the rovers. I have actually used data from the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) that they mention in the release, but I used it for the exact opposite task! I wrote programs that search through the images taken by that camera (there are a lot of them, it …
14 April 2009
Where the Moon Rocks Live
This month, I am working at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, and I have to say, it’s a pretty cool place to work. Every morning I ride my bike past the pair of NASA T-38 jets that mark the entrance to Space Center Houston (the touristy part of JSC). I ride through the security checkpoint and on my left are a handful of rockets from the early days of …
