25 March 2008
Rescinded
I don’t have time to write a long post, but I thought I should share the latest about the rover cuts. The NASA administrator Mike Griffin has stated unequivocally that shutting down a rover is not an option. The letter directing the budget cuts to MER and Odyssey has been rescinded, and we are essentially pretending that the last week didn’t happen. There’s still a budget problem with MSL, and …
24 March 2008
Mars Budget Cuts
Exploring another planet is an expensive business. We all know this, but sometimes it hits home harder than others. Today was one of those times. This afternoon at an all-hands meeting of the Mars Exploration Rovers team, we heard about some particularly bad budget news. The situation is this: the Mars Science Laboratory mission is costing more than expected. It is common for this to happen with spacecraft missions because …
22 March 2008
Life != Salt
Bad Astronomy has pointed out a really unfortunate headline over at MSNBC. The short version: somehow the headline writers at MSNBC misinterpreted the recent evidence for salt on Mars as evidence for life… The headline writers clearly didn’t read much more than the headline of the press release. Oops.
20 March 2008
Mining Phobos and Deimos
Visiting the moon is one thing. It’s a difficult, complicated, dangerous, and exciting thing. But it’s also a thing that we have done before. Sending people to Mars is a whole new ballgame. Instead of a few days of travel, future Mars astronauts will likely be looking at a six month trip there, and at least as long to get back, with an extended stay on Mars in the middle. …
19 March 2008
Arthur C. Clarke
I am saddened to report that science fiction author and visionary Arthur C. Clarke passed away today. AP has more information. If you are not familiar with his writing, Clarke was one of the founding fathers of modern science fiction. Of his stories, my favorites are Childhood’s End, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Rendezvous with Rama. He had a way of seizing upon an idea, whether simple or complex, and …
18 March 2008
Fire and Ice: Tidally Locked Exoplanets
What would the climate be like if the earth was closer to the sun than Mercury, and was tidally locked, so that the same side of the planet always faced the sun? This was the question that Anita Ganesan and colleagues set out to answer with their poster last Thursday night at LPSC. I didn’t get the chance to talk to them directly, but I read their poster and abstract …
16 March 2008
Martian Real Estate
Well, LPSC is over and it is now Cornell’s spring break. Briony and Melissa are running around Joshua Tree National Park this week, so it looks like you’re stuck with me. I was just checking my email when Gmail presented me with a very interesting targeted advertisement: Own Land on the Red Planet ! Apparently there is a company out there convincing gullible people that they can buy plots of …
15 March 2008
Mars is gorges? Gullies @ LPSC
A half session at LPSC was devoted to observations and analog work on Martian gullies. These apparently young, water carved features are one of the many big puzzles on Mars today. Credit: NASA / JPL/ U. Ariz. Gullies, like the one shown above, were discovered on Mars back in 2000 in images taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera, the first high-res camera in orbit around the red planet. They were …
What does Mars Taste Like?
Salt and vinegar potato chips. Ok, not really: there are no potatoes on Mars. On the other hand, there is mounting evidence that Mars is and was a salty and acidic place. The salts are not generally table salt, and the acid was likely sulfuric rather than acetic, but you get the idea. There were several talks today about experimenting with brines (salty solutions) to see if they could explain …
14 March 2008
Enigmatic features on Enceladus
Just as I thought Saturn’s little ice moon Enceladus couldn’t get any cuter, I found out it has dimples. You won’t spot them easily in the Cassini images, but in topographic maps, which Dr. Paul Schenk presented yesterday at LPSC, they’re striking. Schenk identified 5 large depressions smattered across Enceladus, each roughly 100 km across and 1 km deep. For a moon the size of Great Britain, those dimples are …
