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 [...]
Archive for June 2009
Buzz Says: Aim for Mars
June 28, 2009Surreal-looking HiRISE Picture of the Day
June 25, 2009I 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 [...]
Carnival of Space #108 : Solstice Edition!
June 22, 2009Another 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).
Fun with Lasers
June 20, 2009Ladies 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. [...]
Carnival of Space #107
June 15, 2009After 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 [...]
Big Picture: Mercury MESSENGER
June 8, 2009If you’re not already following the Boston Globe’s Big Picture blog, you should be. They always have spectacular photos, often of current events, but also quite often of space-related stuff! Today’s post is about the MESSENGER mission to Mercury. Go check it out.
Carnival of Space #106
June 8, 2009Hello folks, apologies for the lack of posts lately. I have been keeping busy trying to write up a draft of a paper on the Gale crater landing site for MSL, which is taking a very long time and becoming very large. I don’t anticipate having lots of time to post here this month. Even [...]
How to get Mars funding
June 1, 2009On a related note, my fellowship, which involves vaporizing rocks with a high-powered laser, was renewed last month. (Click for the full comic)
