6 January 2009
Obama's Solution to NASA's Moon Woes?
Apologies for the slow posting lately. I’m paying for my sloth over the holidays by rushing to get an abstract written for this year’s Lunar and Planetary Science Conference by Thursday, which means I need to have something resembling results… I thought it would be worth taking a moment and pointing you at this article, though. If I’m reading it correctly, it suggests that Obama may make the moon effort …
30 December 2008
Top 100 Space and Astronomy Blogs
I just got a nice email from Kelly Sonora of FindSchoolsOnline.com letting me know that they had assembled a list of the top 100 space and astronomy blogs on the internet, and that Martian Chronicles made the list! Posting will be light here until after the new year, so if you’re looking for something to read, check out some of the blogs on the list!
24 December 2008
AGU Day 3: Fluvial Systems on Mars
Well, I have survived holiday travel and am now home in Michigan with family. Before I head off to celebrate Christmas eve, here is a quick report from AGU. (I figure I need to get these blog entries posted before I completely forget what my notes mean!) On Wednesday afternoon I spent my time in the Mars sessions on “Ground Truth for Orbital Data” and “Martian Fluvial Systems”. The ground …
20 December 2008
Obama's Weekly Address: Science!
Obama’s youtube address this week focused on his views on science in the US and his picks for his science advisors and administrators. I highly recommend watching the whole address – after the last 8 years, it’s therapeutic to hear the president elect talk about science as if it’s one of the US’s greatest assets and not just an institution standing in the way of political ambitions. Here’s my favorite …
18 December 2008
AGU Day 3: MRO
A long walk to Circuit City and a few dollars later, I am now the proud owner of a new AC adaptor! Luckily today is all posters so I have some time to post a summary of yesterday’s events. Yesterday was a day chock full of Martian goodness, and it started off bright and early with a summary of the results from the Mars Reconaissance Orbiter’s primary mission. MRO has …
AGU Bad News
Today there were some excellent presentations about Mars, but unfortunately I can’t share them with you! My computer’s power adapter broke and so I am cut off from long-duration internet access; I’m writing this on the computer at my hostel. So, AGU posting will be significantly decreased until I can get my computer working again. But fear not, I’m taking notes and will post everything as soon as I can!
17 December 2008
AGU Day 2: Venus
Poor Venus. Even though it is right next door to Earth, it tends not to get much attention. This is because it’s so hot that we can’t last long if we land there, and it’s so cloudy that we can’t study its surface very easily from orbit. It’s a really interesting place though: it is the closest planet in size to the Earth, but it’s climate is drastically different. NASA …
16 December 2008
Why we need Ares
There’s an interesting article up at Daily Kos about the uncertain future of NASA. Here’s an excerpt: But the traditional battle lines between manned and human spaceflight are, as usual, the crux of conflict. The Griffin era managers are concerned the Constellation program, consisting of the Ares heavy booster rocket[s] and the Orion crew module, will be delayed or scrapped altogether along with their life’s work. That conflict is most …
AGU Day 1: Phoenix
This AGU is the first major meeting since Phoenix died last month, and so everyone has been eagerly looking forward to hearing about the results now that the team can focus on science instead of operations. Emily has posted a nice summary of her notes from the Phoenix sessions, so go take a look and then come back here for what I thought were the highlights. The results presented today …
AGU Day 1: Enceladus
After lunch, I went to a few talks about the latest results from Enceladus, Saturn’s little moon with geysers at the south pole. The first talk was by Carolyn Porco, giving a great summary of the very close flybys from earlier this year. Most of the (very very awesome) images from her talk were released today on the imaging team’s website. I especially liked this beautiful mosaic from the October …
