With the details of all four landing sites on the table, we started day 3 of the meeting by hearing from the engineers and several scientists about the properties of the ellipses, the risks for landing and the capabilities of the landing system. First on the schedule was Mike Watkins, who explained why MSL is [...]
Archive for September 2010
The 4th MSL Landing Site Workshop: Day 3 – Engineering and Safety
September 30, 2010The 4th MSL Landing Site Workshop: Day 2 – Eberswalde Crater
September 29, 2010The final site of the four that we discussed yesterday was Eberswalde, which of course is interesting because of the big delta that is preserved in the western part of the crater.The first presentation on Eberswalde was an impassioned and really interesting talk by terrestrial geomorphologist Bill Dietrich. Bill talked about how Eberswalde is an [...]
The 4th MSL Landing Site Workshop: Day 2 – Holden Crater
September 29, 2010The second site that we discussed yesterday was Holden Crater. Ross Irwin gave the first, overview presentation. Holden is a 155 kilometer crater that formed right in the middle of a huge drainage system that spans from the Argyre basin to the northern plains, and at Holden you would land on a bunch of coalescing [...]
The 4th MSL Landing Site Workshop: Day 2 – Mawrth
September 29, 2010Holy cow. Today was jam-packed with interesting stuff about Mawrth Vallis, Holden Crater and Eberswalde Crater! I took tons of notes, and I will try to use those to assemble a coherent picture of what was presented and discussed today. But if you’re too impatient to wait for me to work through those and post [...]
4th MSL Landing Site Workshop: Day 1
September 28, 2010It has begun! Today was the first of a three day workshop in which the Mars science community (not just those directly involved in the MSL mission) gathers together and hashes out what we know and what we don’t know about the four finalist MSL landing sites. For me the week actually started yesterday at [...]
The 4th MSL Landing Site Workshop
September 24, 2010Well folks, I’m off to Pasadena to help the Mars community decide where to send its next rover. Long-time readers will recall that i’ve been to a couple of these things before and they’re always fascinating. I was going to post a reminder of what the four finalist sites are, with pros and cons and [...]
Meteorite Ahead!
September 21, 2010There has been a flurry of emails going around among the MER team about a certain rock ahead of the Opportunity rover that looks like it may be yet another meteorite. It certainly doesn’t look much like the local meridiani rocks, which are the light-toned patches in the photo above. Meteorites are interesting because they [...]
The Science of Starcraft: Supernovae and Gauss Rifles
September 21, 2010I’ve got two new posts up at The Science of Starcraft! The first tackles the difference between supernovae and novae. The words are often used interchangeably in sci-fi, but they are (usually) very different phenomena. Plus, I love telling the story of nucleosynthesis and stellar evolution, and this was a good excuse. The second post [...]
Gale Crater Geomorphology Paper – Published!
September 16, 2010Big news folks! The huge paper that I’ve been working on for the last couple years is finally, unbelievably, published! Even better for you, it is published at the Mars journal, which is an open-access journal. Just head on over and you can download all 53 pages of pure, distilled Science! In case you don’t [...]
Carnival of Space #169
September 12, 2010Hey everyone, the 169th Carnival of Space is up at Next Big Future! Go take a look. Now.
