We started off Day 2 of the field trip by driving up onto the eroded rocks of what used to be the tidal flats of the ancient reef, between the shore and the continental shelf. The closest modern-day analog to the rocks that we visited is the Persian Gulf, where you have an arid climate [...]
Archive for April 2010
MarsSed 2010 Field trip – Day 1: Guadalupe Mountains and Evaporites
April 26, 2010Hello everyone, I’m back from the MarsSed 2010 meeting in ElPaso! The meeting was great: it was small and focused on sedimentology and stratigraphy on Mars, with lots of room for discussion. Even better, there were plenty of terrestrial geologists attending, and their comments were extremely helpful for me, and probably many other Martians who [...]
Incoming! Shuttle Re-Entry over the US!
April 19, 2010Hello from El Paso! I just arrived at the conference hotel, and as I was checking my email, I learned from spaceweather.com that the space shuttle Discovery will be making a rare type of re-entry tomorrow morning that will take it right over the lower 48 states! Landing is scheduled for 8:48 am EDT, and [...]
Off to MarsSed 2010
April 17, 2010I’m headed off to El Paso Texas tomorrow! Why? Because that’s where the Mars Sedimentology and Stratigraphy workshop is! I’ll be presenting my work on the Gale Crater landing site for MSL on tuesday and then the second part of the week will be a geology field trip to interesting and instructive locations. I’m really [...]
Thoughts on Obama’s Space Speech
April 15, 2010In case you missed it, you can click here to watch Obama’s speech at NASA today and read the transcript here. Overall there were not a lot of surprises in this speech. NASA still gets a budget increase. The shuttle is still on-track for cancellation, the Constellation program is also going to be canceled, with [...]
How and when to view today’s Space Conference
April 15, 2010Today’s space conference, including Obama’s speech, will be shown on NASA TV. Here’s the information (copied and pasted from this site): NASA will hold a conference following President Obama’s remarks about the bold new course the administration is charting for NASA and the future of U.S. leadership in human spaceflight on Thursday, April 15, at [...]
Obama to speak at NASA tomorrow
April 14, 2010Well, it looks like president Obama will be making a short visit to Kennedy Space Center tomorrow, where he will give a speech clarifying the space agency’s future. There has been a lot of speculation about what exactly he will say. Will he just promote his original plan, or has all the wailing and gnashing [...]
Review: Bioshock
April 8, 2010When Bioshock came out, I heard rave reviews about its revolutionary gameplay, deep storyline, tough moral choices, arresting visuals and general awesomeness. So of course, when I decided to give in to my old gaming addiction and get an XBox 360, it was near the top of the list of games I wanted. Well, I [...]
We’ve come a long way
April 7, 2010Yesterday our Mars Journal Club met to talk about a book chapter from 1990 about geologic mapping on other planets. It was really useful and informative, but what really struck me was how much things have changed since then. When the chapter was written, the best images of Mars were the Viking orbiter maps. There [...]
