Lunar and Planetary Science Conference 2010

Hi there readers! It’s that time of year again: every March, planetary scientists gather at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference to share all their latest results, and every year I frantically try to keep track of all the cool things I see and report some of them on the blog. This year I’ll be [...]

Reaching out to the Interested Public

Emily Lakdawalla over at the Planetary Society blog posted the other day about a talk that she gave at the Next-generation Suborbital Researchers Conference (NSRC) about how to get the most bang for your buck with public outreach. The main point was that the most successful outreach efforts do not necessarily target The Public as [...]

How would you “Open NASA”?

As you may or may not have heard, the White House has issued an “Open Government” directive to all government agencies which requires them to come up with a plan for how they will become more participatory, collaborative and transparent. To help develop this plan, each agency, including NASA, has been given an “IdeaScale” site [...]

Lasers Shooting Stuff

I posted about lasers last week and mentioned in passing that the US military was working on a giant plane-mounted laser to shoot down missiles. As if on cue, this video was released, showing infrared views of that very laser doing that very thing! And on a related note: good news for mosquito haters out [...]

Shuttle Silhouette

Sorry for the lack of updates in the past week. Things are a bit busy right now as I try to crunch numbers in time to finish a poster for a conference and finish a fellowship renewal (luckily they rely on the same results). Meanwhile, enjoy this excellent photo of the space shuttle taken from [...]

Frickin’ Laser Beams: Fact vs Fiction

Greetings OpenLab 2010 readers! This blog has moved! I am now blogging at: http://blogs.agu.org/martianchronicles/ Last month I spent a week out at Los Alamos National Laboratory vaporizing things with a high powered laser. Now, as I drown in data that I collected out there, I thought I’d take a moment to talk about lasers. When [...]

NASA’s New Budget

The internet has been a whirlwind of wailing and gnashing of teeth, interspersed with the occasional optimistic or guarded response, as space advocates respond to Obama’s fiscal year 2011 budget request for NASA. In case you haven’t heard, the main points of the FY2011 budget are nicely summarized in this overview document: Increase of $6.0 [...]

How to Cook Primordial Soup, with Julia Child

(Courtesy of Amanda Bauer’s blog, astropixie)