25 June 2008
Eureka! Science News: Google News for Science
A Canadian scientist has recently launched a news aggregator for basic science. A news aggregator is a service that automatically collects headlines and blurbs from other sites, without creating any original content – like Google News, AOL News, and Yahoo News. Eureka! Science News provides science news in several categories, including astronomy! So far, I’m pretty impressed with the site, especially the Astronomy/Space section, which provides news as well as …
24 June 2008
Phoenix hilarity
My old thesis title: “Composition and morphology of aeolian deposits in the north polar region of Mars and implications for sediment transport.” My new thesis title: “Why the #$%#& are there polar bears at the north pole of Mars?”
23 June 2008
Phoenix updates: TEGA interview, new images
First off, Astrobiology Magazine has posted a great interview with the TEGA (Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer – the ovens) principal investigator Bill Boynton. The interview provides a really great overview of how TEGA works, and what the team is hoping to see. The interview pretty much answered all the lingering questions that I had, as well as some that people have posted in the comments recently. In particular, here’s …
21 June 2008
The Great Canadian Adventure – Part 2: Gypsumville and Salt Springs
After our trip to the mine tailings, we headed to the remains of an ancient 40 km impact crater. The crater is totally invisible, but the rocks tell the story plain as day. Our first stop was just outside the town of Gypsumville. We drove through swampy, bumpy back roads into the middle of nowhere and stopped next to an unassuming patch of rock and gravel. At first it didn’t …
20 June 2008
It's official – Phoenix has found ice!
Some great news from Phoenix this morning: Phoenix has seen chunks of ice vaporize! (Press release via SpaceRef) The chunks of white material were sitting at the bottom of a trench the lander dug 4 days ago, and after looking at the trench again this morning, the chunks appear to vanished! Here’s an animation showing the changes – look for the vanishing chunks in the shadow on the left side …
The Great Canadian Adventure: Part 1 – The Price of Gold
After our trip to Great Sand Dunes National Park, where we compared dunes on Earth to those on Mars, we flew up north to Winnipeg, Canada. There we met up with a bunch of geologists and spent three days exploring a bunch of interesting sites in Manitoba. The first site was an old mine tailings dump from a gold mine in the area. When mining for gold, the rocks are …
Carnival of Space #59
Hey everyone, I’m back from my Great Canadian Adventure (more on that later) just in time for the Carnival of Space over at Green Gabbro. For those of you who are not up on the lingo, a Gabbro is a dark, coarse-grained igneous rock. Hooray for geologists who like space!
19 June 2008
House authorizes NASA funding increase over proposed budget
A quick NASA budget update: the House has approved a bill that authorizes a NASA budget of $20.2 billion for the next fiscal year, which is a significant increase over the White House’s proposed budget of $17.8 billion. The bill is likely to make it through the Senate intact as well. An important note: an authorization bill is not the same as actually giving out money. The bill “authorizes” a …
14 June 2008
Which is Earth?
We had another great day at Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve today, with lots of pictures, but it also involved a lot of hiking and I’m tired. So instead of a full post, I will refer you to my adviser’s post about our first day at the dunes, over at the Planetary Society blog. I’m also stealing the image that he posted over there, comparing granule ripples on …
13 June 2008
Carnival of Space #58
The 58th carnival of space is up at Universe Today! Go check it out!
