InterplanetSarah

Countdown to Earth Day - part 8 of 8

2011-04-16T20:03:00.000-07:00

Happy Earth Day everyone!

I hope you have enjoyed my little countdown. Today's quote, the final one, comes from Kalpana Chawla, a shuttle astronaut that we tragically lost on Colombia's final flight (STS-107).

"This planet below you is our campsite, and you know of no other campground."

As a geologist, a former Girl Scout, and a member of an "outdoorsy" family, I have spent my fair share of time around a campfire, and maybe that's why this particular quote resonates so strongly for me. Even the smell of a campfire makes me feel warm and safe and loved. You know how you go into the woods to get more wood or find sticks for marshmallows and it's cold and dark and you don't know what's out there and there's bugs, and then you find that perfect stick and you head back, you break into the clearing and just ahead you can see the campfire and it's warm and inviting and surrounded by the people you love, a little oasis in the dark. That's the Earth, our little oasis in the vast darkness of space.

Wanna celebrate Earth Day? Here are some local activities for DC, or find something happening near you.

Countdown to Earth Day part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6 part 7

Countdown to Earth Day - part 7 of 8

2011-04-16T20:02:00.000-07:00

I really believe that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of 100,000 miles their outlook could be fundamentally changed. That all-important border would be invisible, that noisy argument silenced. The tiny globe would continue to turn, serenely ignoring its subdivisions, presenting a unified façade that would cry out for unified understanding, for homogeneous treatment. The earth must become as it appears: blue and white, not capitalist or Communist; blue and white, not rich or poor; blue and white, not envious or envied.

Today we come back to Michael Collins, Apollo 11, with a quote from his book Carrying the Fire: An Astronauts Journeys. This one is a bit more profound than his quote about seeing the world in his window from part 4. I had a hard time deciding on today's' quote, Mike was certainly not the only one to note how from space, "borders" and "nations" don't exist, along with the sense of Earth's fragility, it is the most common sentiment expressed by those lucky few that have had the opportunity to take in this view.

Here are a few other quotes that inspired this image...

The first day or so we all pointed to our countries. The third or fourth day we were pointing to our continents. By the fifth day, we were aware of only one Earth.
— Sultan bin Salman Al-Saud, STS-51G

You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the Moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, "Look at that, you son of a bitch.
— Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14, People magazine, 8 April 1974

When you're finally up at the Moon looking back on earth, all those differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend, and you're going to get a concept that maybe this really is one world and why the hell can't we learn to live together like decent people.
— Frank Borman, Apollo 8, Newsweek, 23 December 1968.

As I looked down, I saw a large river meandering slowly along for miles, passing from one country to another without stopping. I also saw huge forests, extending along several borders. And I watched the extent of one ocean touch the shores of separate continents. Two words leaped to mind as I looked down on all this: commonality and interdependence. We are one world.
— John-David Bartoe, STS-51F

Countdown to Earth Day part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6

Countdown to Earth Day part 6 of 8

2011-04-10T17:20:00.000-07:00

"Frequently on the lunar surface I said to myself, 'This is the Moon, that is the Earth. I'm really here, I'm really here.'"

This quote from Alan Bean, Apollo 12, is from an interview he did soon after he returned from the Moon. I really love this one because I have the feeling that this would be my reaction - like, "I so want to be here in this moment, but I can't quite wrap my brain around what is going on. Is this really happening?"

I have many times walked out of the lab and seen the Moon hanging in the sky and thought about how the bits of rock and dust that I was just looking at come from up there, and even that thought sometimes seems inconceivable, but to be up there looking at the Earth in the distance must be mindboggling, utterly and completely mindboggling.

Alan Bean, by the way became an amazing artist after his astronaut career ended. Here is a lovely painting he did of the view looking back at "Mother Earth" and another he calls "A jewel in the heavens". You can find more of his work at www.alanbean.com.

Countdown to Earth Day part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5

Countdown to Earth Day part 5 of 8

2011-04-10T17:14:00.000-07:00

"My view of our planet was a glimpse of divinity."

Today's quote comes from Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14. For several of the Apollo astronauts, seeing the Earth from the Moon was a profoundly spiritual moment.

As far as I know, Edgar did not kneel and pray on the surface as I depict here (in fact, I'm not totally sure that would have been physically possible in one of those suits, they didn't bend well), but the rock-altar is based on a real rock at the Ap 14 site.

It is true that a passage from Genesis was read aloud by the Apollo 8 crew, the first crew to set eyes on the Earth from a distance. We do also know that Buzz Aldrin stopped to pray on the Moon and was, in fact, the first to celebrate holy communion on the Moon. Apollo 15 astronaut James Irwin was so deeply moved by his experience that he left the astronaut corp to became the founding president of the High Flight Foundation, an inter-denominational evangelical organization, and devoted the rest of his life to "spreading the good news of Jesus Christ."

Countdown to Earth Day part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4

Countdown to Earth Day - part 2 of 8

2011-04-10T09:48:00.000-07:00

"The Earth reminded us of a Christmas tree ornament hanging in the blackness of space. As we got farther and farther away it diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful marble you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart."

This quote comes from James Irwin, Apollo 15. Many of the astronauts have commented on how fragile the Earth appears, but I really liked the analogy to the Christmas tree ornament, maybe because I have broken enough of them in my day to understand just how fragile they are.

Countdown to Earth Day part 1

Countdown to Earth Day - part 4 of 8

2011-04-04T16:31:00.001-07:00

"I've got the world in my window."

This quote comes from the other Apollo 11 astronaut, Michael Collins. Mike is the one that stayed in orbit while Neil and Buzz went down to the surface. This quote is not terribly profound, he was just talking to mission control about what he could see out the window. The full quote is "I've got the world in my window for a change and looking at it through the monocular, it's really something. I wish I could describe it properly, but the weather is very good. South America is coming around into view. I can see on the - what appears to me to be upper horizon, a point that must be just about Seattle, Washington, and then from there I can see all the way down to the southern tip - Tierra del Fuego and the southern tip of the continent." (Mission control responds - Roger. Sounds like you've got a beautiful view up there.) "Absolutely fantastic. I hope the pictures come out; we're rotating around where it's going out of view again."

I guess I just really liked the idea that the whole world could fit into that tiny little window.

Countdown to Earth Day part 1 part 2 part 3

Countdown to Earth Day - part 3 of 8

2011-04-04T15:53:00.000-07:00

Today's quote comes from Apollo 17 astronaut and the one and only geologist to walk on the Moon, Jack Schmitt.

"Eh! You seen one Earth, you've seen them all."

A little context for this one...
The Apollo 17 crew had arrived at the Moon and had just finished their first major task, getting the rover assembled, when Gene Cernan was distracted by the view of the Earth in the distance. He called to his partner, "Hey Jack, just stop. You owe yourself thirty seconds to look up over the South Massif at the Earth." "What? The Earth?" Jack replied. "Just look up there," Gene insisted, and this quote was Jack's reply as he went about his business doing some soil observations (I took a little artistic license by putting a rock in his hands, which made a better visual counterpoint to the Moon then him staring at the ground).

Gene notes in his book Last Man on the Moon that in that moment he was "almost disgusted with the blasé reaction" but I totally get it. They were already seven precious minutes behind schedule and with such limited time and an entire planet to explore, even 30 seconds wasted would mean one less sample collected or one less observation made. Besides that, Jack had spent most of the 3-day trip to the Moon looking back at the Earth working on a meteorology study, he had seen plenty of the Earth, this was his moment to see the Moon.

Upon his return to Earth Jack was quite amused to find that this quote had actually been picked up and co-opted by the environmental movement and could be found on a wide array of t-shirts and bumper stickers.

Countdown to Earth Day part 1 part 2

Countdown to Earth Day - part 1 of 8

2011-04-04T15:11:00.000-07:00

So Earth day is approaching and I have been thinking a lot lately about a quote from Socrates:

"Man must rise above the Earth...to the top of the atmosphere and beyond...for only thus will he understand the world in which he lives."

And then that quote got me thinking about other quotes, from the astronauts who are among the lucky few that have risen above the Earth and beyond, and how that perspective changed them and the way they understand the world on which they live.

I have created a series of paintings based on some of those quotes, and I'm going to post them here, one-a-day until Earth day. Some are deep and profound, some are not, but they all represent very human responses to (what I can only imagine) is an extraordinary experience.

People often ask me what is the value of space exploration, and there are so many answers to that question, but this is one that I often forget about. It was not a coincidence that the environmental movement started and the first Earth day celebrations happened soon after the Apollo program began returning images of the Earth from a distance, like this gorgeous view from Apollo 8. Seeing even a photograph of our world hanging there alone in the vastness of space made us instantly aware of how fragile it is, but for those that have seen that view in person, nearly all of them describe it as profound and life changing.

So, here is the first one. This is probably my favorite quote among the bunch. It is from Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong, who I think is the most poetic of the astronauts.

"It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the plant Earth. I didn't feel like a giant, I felt very, very small."

New Paintings

2010-05-31T15:46:00.001-07:00

This one is called "All Dressed Up"

And this one is "Beckoning"

Fun with Mathmatical Modeling

2009-08-21T11:37:00.000-07:00

Have you seen this paper on modeling a zombie infection outbreak? It's awesome.

"In summary, a zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilisation, unless it is dealt with quickly. While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often. As seen in the movies, it is imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly, or else we are all in a great deal of trouble."

Sure, having a published paper on Zombie attacks is like the coolest thing ever when you're a grad student, but I bet it raises a few eyebrows when these guys go up for tenure.

via Freakonomics via The Park Bench

Galileo vs. Newton

2009-08-19T07:43:00.000-07:00

File this under "funny because it's true" or maybe "sad because it's true"?

"The point of the comparison is to contrast two competing modes of scientific communication, as embodied by our two heroes."

Why is making science accessible such a crime in academia? Why are those who deign to speak to mere mortals looked down upon by so many of their colleagues?

On a lighter note, my favorite part of this blog post is that the majority of the comments revolve around whether or not Newton died a virgin. Seriously.

Thanks for the link Emily!

What are the aliens watching on TV?

2009-07-24T09:12:00.000-07:00

This is pretty cool.

Courtesy of Abstruse Goose

Countdown to the Moon day at the Air & Space Museum

2009-07-17T15:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I spend the day manning a table at the National Air & Space Museum as a "Lunar Expert" to help them celebrate the 40th anniversary of the day that Apollo 11 launched. According to the little counter they gave me, over 800 people stopped by my booth to learn about "Moon dust". I had a bunch of images of soil grains from my own research, plus some lunar soil simulants and a handful of 3D analglyphs donated from a colleague at Lehigh (which were clearly the hit, man people really love those 3D images). I love doing these public outreach things, but I have to say I am always amazed by both the sophistication and the sheer ignorance of some of the questions I get asked.

A few of the things I was asked yesterday:

Is this real Moon dust? - referring to the two jars of soil simulants I brought (yeah, I'm sure NASA would have no problem with me leaving half a pound of lunar soil on an table in the middle of a museum full of people).

Was Night at the Museum II filmed here? - turns out it was, I didn't know that at the time though, and also, I'm not an information booth. There was also a question about the new Transformers movie, although I'm pretty sure that one was not filmed in the museum.

Is Moon dust radioactive? - I get this question from time to time and I don't understand where that comes from or why people would think that.

Have we figured out any good uses for Moon dust yet? - There were at least a dozen people who asked me some version of this question, because apparently there is no reason to go back to the Moon unless we can mine it for something. I tried to turn their question into a discussion of in situ resource utilization and explain how the soil contains all the elements we need to survive and make rocket fuel, so if we can figure out how to extract it we can "live off the land," I think that worked with about half the question askers, the others just seemed disappointed, apparently "oxygen" was not the answer they were looking for.

Did you collect these samples yourself? - I swear, I'm not making this up, there were two people, two, adults, at separate times, that genuinely thought I might have gone to the Moon myself and brought back my soil. One seamed really taken aback when I said that no one had been to the Moon in my lifetime, the other was like, "oh yeah, that's right". Wow, it's interactions like that that really scare the bejeezus out of me. How do these people function in normal life? It reminds me of a hairstylist I once had that thought the Sun and the Moon were the same thing, it just got dimmer at night (true story).

Not to worry though, for every left field question, there were plenty of bright and curious types of all ages with good questions. There was one guy who stayed for like half an hour just firing one question after the other, he was awesome, he kept apologizing to the gathering crowd for monopolizing me and they were like, no, we're learning so much from your questions, keep going. And the kid who was allergic to dust and wanted to know if he would be allergic to Moon dust too - that's a great question. (For the record, probably not, most terrestrial dust allergies are due to dust mites, which lunar soil doesn't have, but at least two people during Apollo one astronaut and one flight surgeon, experienced "hayfever-like" symptoms after being exposed to lunar dust.)

All in all, it was a good time. The museum was crowded, people mostly seemed interested and engaged. This was the first "Moon day" the museum has done, they normally do a "Mars day" but made an exception this year for the anniversary. I hope they don't wait until the next bit anniversary to do it again. I mean, Mars is cool and all, but come on, give the Moon some love too!

The Apollo 14 landing site from LRO

2009-07-17T15:48:00.000-07:00

This is just too cool! You can see where they walked! More images of some of the other landing sites can be found here.

LCROSS impact might upset the aliens

2009-06-23T19:15:00.000-07:00

According to this guy, the LCROSS mission which launched last week (That's it in the picture. I was there! It was awesome!) and will impact into the Lunar South Pole on October 9th of this year (mark your calendars), breaks international law, and may rile up the Moon's alien colonists.

I've got to tell you, the thing that bothers me most about this article is not the ridiculousness of the whole alien thing, it's that he talks about this supposed alien base being on the "dark" side of the Moon. People, the Moon doesn't have a "dark" side! It has a near side and a far side (or "backside" but I've been told that because "backside" had other connotations I should avoid using it). The far side has a two-week long night, followed by a two-week long day, just like the side we get to see.

Also, and I realize this is a minor point in the scope of his overall arguments, but the US never signed the Moon Treaty, and therefore, even if LCROSS did violate it (which it doesn't), it still wouldn't matter.

New Paintings

2009-06-07T14:56:00.001-07:00

Some recent paintings:

Titan and Enceledus

Four Moons

Earth and Moon #4

The Great Moon Rock Heist

2009-06-07T14:24:00.000-07:00

So, this article came out about a month ago now, I'm a little behind (see previous post), but I just couldn't let it slip by.

It's a rather entertaining read. It's the story of how an intern, Thad, stole some Moon rocks from JSC back in 2002, or I should say, it's Thad's version of the story. Although Thad and I never crossed paths, I too was an intern in building 31 and then a grad student and then a postdoc, and I can assure you that nearly every word of this account is totally fabricated, with the possible exception of this, my favorite line, "Sometime between the heist and its resolution, Tiffany and Thad arranged the Moon rocks on a bed—and had sex amongst them." Ugh, the contamination! Not to mention, that can't have been comfortable.

The truth is that the safe Thad and his girlfriend stole was from a scientist's office not the vault, and the altruistic spin he tries to put on his escapades, that he was taking "returned samples" that no longer had any scientific value is ludicrous. All of the Moon rocks have scientific value, even samples that have been previously studied, and these particular samples had been allocated to the safe's owner for use in specific experiments.

Thad has served his sentence and is apparently now trying to get a book deal. I wish him luck. No, on second though, I don't. What an ass.

Life update

2009-06-07T14:06:00.000-07:00

So I haven't posted a blog entry in months. I blame Facebook and Twitter for eating up all my free internet time. Also, I moved across the country, again (for those keeping score, that's the 5th time in 6 years), and started a new job (not a "postdoc" or a "fellowship", an actual job - I know, I'm shocked too). Still working for NASA, but now I'm at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville Alabama. Alabama is one place I never thought I would end up living, and while I'm still adjusting to the Southern culture, I have to say that Huntsville is actually a great little city. So here's hoping I don't have to move again for a while, because moving sucks. In the meantime, I will try to get back to at least semi-regular posts here, and I also occasionally post at the Women in Planetary Science blog.

What's a conference?

2008-10-25T13:10:00.000-07:00

So, by now most NASA civil servants have heard the news or at least heard rumors about the news that one of the provisions included in the NASA Authorization Act of 2008 eliminates or severely restricts all conference travel and pretty much any support for conferences from NASA. It's probably not going to end up being quite that bad, but until the lawyers figure out what exactly defines a "conference" NASA has, for now at least, put out a moratorium on using 09 funds for anything that even vaguely resembles a conference (though apparently air shows are perfectly fine).

My initial reaction to this was WTF? Why would Congress want to prevent NASA scientists from doing their job? As scientists, our job is to figure things out and then communicate our results with the rest of the community and the world, that's how science works. Yes, we publish our results in journals, but conferences are a vital part of the process. We get the opportunity for immediate feedback, we get exposed to new ideas, and find people to collaborate with.

I could not figure out what the heck Congress, or specifically, Sen. Tom Coburn who wrote this provision, was thinking until I stumbled upon this article. It talks about "NASA’s long-standing practice of honoring retirees and contractors with lavish award ceremonies costing millions of dollars a year" and it refers to these parties as "conferences". No wonder Congress is upset, I agree that that is wasteful spending, but it's not a conference. A conference is hundreds or thousands of scientists or engineers gathering together to discuss science. We don't get "gourmet food and wine receptions," we are lucky to get a mid-morning coffee break.

(BTW - who are these special retirees? In my office at NASA HQ, when someone retires we take up a collection to buy a card and maybe some cake and chips and salsa and then we gather in the conference room for an hour to wish them well.)

Anyway, I'm wondering who screwed up here, Congress for rushing this bill though and not catching this, or us, the science community for failing to properly explain what we do, how we do it, and why it's important?

Whatever happened, it's going to be a tough year for civil servant scientists, they may have to find some "symposia" or "workshops" to attend this year instead of conferences. It's going to be tough on a lot of other folks too unfortunately, most of the NASA-sponsored funds for conferences, at least in planetary sciences, went towards student travel to those conferences. I hope that denying these opportunities to students was not Senator Coburn's intention.

This made me laugh today

2008-08-29T06:07:00.001-07:00

xkcd brings the funny...

Apollo Moon Hoax Mythbusters tonight!

2008-08-27T03:56:00.000-07:00

Don't forget to watch, or set the Tivo, for Mythbusters tonight and find out if we really did fake the Moonlandings!

Happy International Left-Handers Day!

2008-08-13T07:34:00.000-07:00

Hey fellow southpaws - Happy International Left-Handers Day! And a special congrats to Barack Obama, 2008's Left Hander of the Year.

For all you rightys out there, today is a good day to try to do something left handed to get a sense for what us chosen few have to put up with day in and day out. I recall one Left-Handers day a number of years ago when a bunch of us were playing pool and I made all of the rightys shoot left-handed. Sadly, I was still the worst player there, but it did even the playing field somewhat.

Happy 50th Birthday NASA!

2008-07-29T10:47:00.000-07:00

It was on this date, July 29th, 1959, that Eisenhower officially signed into law the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating NASA. Space.com has a good summary of the events that led up to that moment.

In honor of NASA's big day, I'd like to point out the new NASAimages.org site, a service of the internet archive, where you can easily search for just about any image NASA has ever taken. I've played with it a little, and I have to say the search engine is considerably better than other NASA image databases I've used. Try plugging in your favorite color, or your name (there were 86 hits on Sarah!), or your favorite moon, just to see what pops up.

Breaking News: Water Found on Mars, Again

2008-07-17T06:08:00.000-07:00

Lakes and Rivers and Deltas, oh my!

OMG, they found evidence of water on Mars! Can you believe it? And apparently, it's not just regular water, it's "hardworking" water. None of that slacker, do-nothing water for Mars.

Why do I have the strangest feeling of deja vu?

I don't mean to make fun of the research, it's actually pretty cool stuff, but seriously people, we get it, Mars was wet. Really wet. For a long time.

image credit/copyright: Ellen Roper (GCC)

New Painting

2008-07-13T15:13:00.000-07:00

I came across this anonymous quote somewhere recently:

"Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the Moon."

And it inspired this painting...

I think I'm going to use the quote as the title, which is a ridiculously long title, but for some reason it makes me happy.

Star Trek is what's killing the space program!?

2008-07-11T12:28:00.000-07:00

According to Buzz Aldrin, the lack of interest among "young people" in the space program is due to "all the shows where they beam people around and things like that" because "they have made young people think that that is what the space program should be doing. It's not realistic."

Wow, I'm thinking that would come as quite a surprise to the hundreds of NASA scientists and engineers (myself included) that cite Star Trek in particular and science fiction in general as one of the main things that got them interested in space.

The literal kind of space art

2008-07-09T16:06:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm a space artist, by which I mean I paint space-related things, but this guy is a more literal kind of space artist, in that he attempted to paint in zero-G on board a vomit comet. Apparently he's into creating art "in impractical places." You can judge his success for yourself, here is the video. (via NASAwatch)

Just for fun

2008-06-21T07:47:00.000-07:00

68%

Created by OnePlusYou

So I nearly failed the Moon survival challenge because my answers didn't match "NASA's" however, I stand by my choices and I seriously doubt that NASA would agree that a flashlight isn't important unless you're on the "dark side" and I don't know anything about how flares work, but I'm guessing not that well without an atmosphere. I'm just saying.

This made me laugh today

2008-06-11T05:36:00.000-07:00

For all the geologists out there...

http://s65.photobucket.com/albums/h223/fishmato/?action=view¤t=AmericanDad.flv

Carnival of Space #57

2008-06-07T07:55:00.000-07:00

Every week a different webmaster or blogger hosts something called the "Carnival of Space" which is a collection of highlight from the week from various space blogs and other articles written on the general topic of space.

This week's Carnival is hosted by Ken, the Lunar Librarian at Out of the Cradle and covers last weeks International Space Development Conference and a lot of stuff on Phoenix. There's also a quick interview with my boss, Ed Weiler and tons of other fascinating stuff. Plus, this week's theme is "Women of our space future"

Worth checking out.

Artomatic 2008 update

2008-05-26T06:26:00.000-07:00

A quick update on Artomatic...

Opening night was great. My friends came out to support me and I met lots of the other artists.

"Meet the Artists night" was great too. I brought cookies:
Some folks were afraid to eat them because they thought maybe they were part of the exhibit :)

It was fun to talk to people and get feedback on my artwork, although I found that more people wanted to talk to me about whether or not we really went to the Moon, or why we are going back to the Moon, and so on. Usually I really enjoy those conversations with the general public, but you know, I kinda just wanted to be an artist and not a NASA representative for one night.

I actually sold two pieces, which totally made my night (thanks Steve).

As promised, here are a couple of other pics...

Sean, my partition buddy, on opening night.

Some of my favorite things, mostly from the 7th floor:
A photo doesn't do justice to a mobile, you have to see it in motion, but this mobile is possible my favorite thing in the entire show. It so doesn't look like it should work.

This chair is made out of pop can tops. Wow.

I love the vibrant colors in these paintings.

These are just fun.

Fire Dancers - very cool.

Phoenix has landed!

2008-05-26T05:40:00.000-07:00

Congrats to the Phoenix team on their successful landing on Mars!

I went to a talk last week by Fuk Li, the manager of JPL's Mars Exploration Program, where he basically spent an hour going through all the different ways that things could go wrong with the landing, listing all of the hundreds of little things that had to work perfectly, including a few things that are out of NASA's control, like what happens if you land cockeyed on a big rock? And I have to admit that I walked out of that talk a little worried. It's really hard to land on Mars, really hard. But, you know what, NASA is really good at what it does. Way to go guys!

Artomatic 2008

2008-05-06T17:33:00.000-07:00

So I'm participating in an enormous art show that opens this week called Artomatic. If you're in or near DC in the next month, you should stop by and check it out. There will be over a thousand artists, including over 800 visual artists of every stripe, plus two music stages, a theater space, dance space, a poetry room, a film room, a classroom, a tattoo parlor, open mics, performance art, fire dancing, burlesque, and more. It's going to be quite a spectacle. Go to the website for all the details.

I finally put the finishing touches on my space last night. Here are a few pictures of how I put it all together over the last couple of weeks. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, but boy was it a lot of work.

This is my spot on the 7th floor, strategically near the stairs and the bathrooms.

My partition neighbor Sean, aka SecretWorm is a digital/graffiti artist and his concept was to make his wall look like a graffitied city street, which is really cool, but almost overwhelming visually, so I wanted something bold and clean that would balance and contrast that.

Here it is after spackling, sanding and the first coat of paint. The paint, which is blue even though it looks white in this picture, is the leftovers from when I painted my apartment in Providence, thus proving that carrying that bucket of paint back and forth across the country three times was totally worth it.

Here it is with all the painting finished. I think it looks pretty cool, but I wish I had done the lettering a little neater, maybe used stencils or something. Live and learn.

And here is the almost final state. I wish I had cleaned up my mess before I took the last picture but I was just so excited to have everything hung.

I'll take some at the opening on Friday.

New Paintings

2008-05-06T17:29:00.001-07:00

A couple new paintings...

Send your name to the Moon

2008-05-02T10:02:00.000-07:00

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter team would like to invite you to send your name to the Moon onboard the LRO spacecraft:

http://lro.jhuapl.edu/NameToMoon/index.php

Unfortunately, it's just on the orbiter, so it looks like your name won't actually make it to the lunar surface (unless it crashes). They should totally put the names on the LCROSS part that is supposed to crash, that would be way cooler.

My name is already en route to the asteroid belt on board DAWN and it crashed into a comet on board Deep Impact, and I think I may be headed to Mercury on MESSENGER too, so I'm making some progress on spreading a little bit of me throughout the solar system.

New Painting

2008-04-21T17:07:00.000-07:00

I call this one "Blue Moon"

13 year old smarter than NASA! Oh, and p.s. we're all going to die

2008-04-16T05:47:00.001-07:00

German schoolboy, 13, corrects NASA's asteroid figures

I love that the big headline here is that this kid can do math better than NASA, and not that there's a 1 in 450 chance that life as we know it will supposedly be wiped out by this asteroid.

Apparently the whole thing is a hoax anyway: Apophis risk not increased: science fair judges, world media screw up big time

But it's still really funny.

OMG we're all doomed

2008-03-25T08:37:00.000-07:00

Apparently, according to this article in the NYTimes, the amount of beer a scientist drinks is inversely proportional to the amount of science they publish (i.e. more beer = fewer papers).

What? That's so not fair, I spent like two years in grad school learning how to drink beer just so I could fit in with my colleagues, and now you tell that I would have been a "more productive scientist" if only I had stuck with mudslides and amaretto sours?

Of course, if you read to the end of the article, you find out that these results may only hold true for biologists in the Czech Republic (apparently that country has a "special relationship to beer"). So maybe we'll be okay, but just to be on the safe side, I think I'll drink wine this weekend instead of beer and see if that motivates me to work on one of those 3 papers I'm supposed to be writing.

Surviving LPSC

2008-03-15T14:02:00.000-07:00

For the second year in a row, I was felled with the flu halfway through the week of LPSC, unbelievable. That will teach me not to get a flu shot. But even through the fever and chills and the drug-induced haze, I would have to say it was still a pretty good week.

For me, the highlight was all the fabulous stuff from the MESSENGER flyby of Mercury. Luckily those talks were on Monday when I was still fully conscience. What an incredible mother lode of data. I can't remember the last time I was this excited about science after a full day of talks. It's almost like whole new planet. My friend Emily over at the planetary society blog has great details from several of the talks from that session here.

Normally, I would give a rundown here of the various NASA night events and what the folks from headquarters had to say, but as I am now one of those HQ folks, that's probably not appropriate. I will say though that it was an interesting perspective sitting in the audience as one of "them" rather than just a member of the community, but in the end, I was proud to be one of those headquarters folks, I think we're doing a pretty good job, and the community mostly seems to appreciate the work we are putting in.

If you weren't there and would like to know what went down, Star Stryder has a good rundown of Mike Griffin's talk and q&a here.

and Emily has a good rundown of Alan Stern's here.

New Painting

2008-03-03T07:57:00.000-08:00

Until I come up with something more interesting, I'm calling this one "Earth and Moon #3"

As always, if you like my art, you can find more here:

New Painting

2008-02-24T13:18:00.000-08:00

The third, and probably last, at least for a while, in my lunar-landscape-from-orbit series. This is "Daedalus in orange"- Daedalus being that big crater in the middle.

If you like my art, you can find more here.

Cool video of the Huygen's probe landing on Titan

2008-02-22T14:38:00.000-08:00

Wow! This is one of the coolest things I've seen in a while. It is a very carefully pieced together video of some 3500 images from the Huygens probe decent imager as it landed on Titan. The four hour landing has been compressed into a fabulous four minute movie.

Awesome video here: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/videos/video-details.cfm?videoID=126

Cassini homepage here: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The descent imager/spectral radiometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Credit: ESA/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

New Painting

2008-02-17T15:47:00.000-08:00

This piece, titled "Not Quite HD" is my homage to one of the first HD images released by JAXA from the Kaguya spacecraft.

The original can be found here, along with some really cool movies of the Earth rising and setting over the Moon.

If you like my art, you can find more here.

Gordon McKay

2008-02-08T14:32:00.000-08:00

The planetary science community had lost a friend and colleague. Gordon McKay passed early yesterday morning.

Gordon was truly a gentleman and a scholar. He was a talented scientist, a fabulous manager, and a good friend to many. I am lucky to have been able to call him a friend. I learned a lot from him, about science, about NASA, and about life. I found I could always count on him for a few encouraging words, usually over a beer at Boondoggles. He will be missed by many.

Update: Letter from NASA HQ on Gordon's Passing

The Face on Mercury

2008-01-21T12:29:00.000-08:00

As I was perusing the fabulous new pics from Mercury last week, I was thinking about how I heard somewhere long ago that it is hard-wired into our brains to pull out faces from random patterns when I came across this little guy, who, to my eyes is the spitting image of Gizmo (don't feed him after midnight!). (The original image is here)

If you haven't seen them yet, I highly recommend taking a peek at some of the fabulous pics returned by MESSENGER in its highly successful first flyby of Mercury, or visiting my friend Emily's blog at the planetary society where she has been doing a great job of pointing out some of the cool things to be seen (although not as cool as Gizmo, in my opinion).

Life update

2008-01-21T12:05:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the extended hiatus. Over the holidays I moved both physically and in cyberspace.

In real life, you can now find me in Washington DC, where I will be working in the Planetary Science Division at NASA HQs.

Online, my homepage can now be conveniently found at www.interplanetsarah.com. Unfortunately, the only thing that's been updated is the url, but I'm working on slowly getting things up to date.

Because of my new position at HQs, obviously, I have to limit the sorts of things that I can share on this blog (i.e. my personal opinions regarding anything having to do with NASA). Never fear, I still have opinions, and I'm sure that I will have ample opportunity to express them within the confines of my job, and let's face it, discussing these topics with my colleagues at HQs is probably considerable more effective than ranting about them on the web. So wish me luck!

Merry Christmas

2007-12-23T07:51:00.000-08:00

moar funny pictures

moar funny pictures

This made me laugh today...

2007-12-05T06:37:00.000-08:00

The 12 days of Christmas, NASA style (courtesy NASAwatch)

New Painting

2007-11-18T14:02:00.000-08:00

My latest work...

HDTV movies of the Moon from Kaguya

2007-11-08T06:37:00.000-08:00

The Japanese Kaguya (formerly Selene) mission has captured the first high-def movies from the Moon. Pretty impressive stuff, even if it does lose some of that high-def impact when it's a tiny little movie on your computer screen. Still pretty though.

The captions are all in Japanese, but the movie consists of two sequences:

The first sequence is a movie flying over the western region of Oceanus Procellarum. Starting point is approx. 25 N, 275 - 282 E and ending point is 49N, 275 - 283 E. The contrast of mare and highland are clearly recognized.

The second sequence is a scene flying over the north pole region. Starting point is approx. 66 N, 274 - 288 E and ending point is 87 N, 26 - 161 E. Kaguya is flying from the northern part of Oceanus Procellarum to the north pole. As it is in high latitude, incidence angle becomes lower and it makes shadows longer. Thanks to lower angle, we can see craters and other cobbly surface features very clearly.

These sequence captured on 31 Oct, 2007 (JST) with altitude of approximately 100 kilometers.

Congrats to our Japanese friends!

China's 1st lunar probe Chang'e-1 blasts off

2007-10-24T12:48:00.001-07:00

Congrats to China on entering the lunar fray with the successful launch of their first lunar orbiter!

According to the Chinese English-language news, the orbiter is slated to develop "a three-dimensional survey of the Moon's surface", to analyze "the abundance and distribution of elements on lunar surface", to characterize the lunar regolith and the "powdery soil layer on the surface", and to explore the "circumstance between the Earth and the Moon."

This is supposed to be just China's first step in lunar exploration. A lunar lander or rover is slated for about 2012, and they are working towards sending humans in a time frame similar to our own. In fact, NASA's administrator Mike Griffin made headlines recently when he commented that they may beat us there. China though (at least officially) claims that this is not a race: "China will not embark on any lunar probe competition 'in any form with any country' and will 'share the results of its moon exploration with the whole world' in its pursuit of a policy of peaceful use of airspace, said a chief commander of the country's first lunar satellite project."

This made me laugh today...

2007-10-15T10:27:00.000-07:00

Stephen Colbert writes an Op-Ed for the NY Times.

New Paintings

2007-10-13T15:28:00.000-07:00

I finished three new paintings this week (well, 5 if you count the triptych as 3 separate ones, but that's not really fair). Here are the new ones, if you'd like to see more, check out my website.

NASA night at DPS

2007-10-11T14:28:00.000-07:00

There is a great rundown of NASA night at the DPS (Division of Planetary Sciences) meeting up at the Planetary Society's Blog. Emily provides lots of insights into the new SMD crew at NASA headquarters; sounds like things have really turned around in the relationship between the community and HQ since Alan Stern took over.

This made me laugh today...

2007-10-11T13:55:00.001-07:00

NASA announces plans to bring Wi-Fi to its Headquarters by 2017

I do enjoy the Onion, and I like that JSC is considered "NASA's Headquarters." Do you think the folks at HQs were ticked off by that? Of course, NASA will never make the 2017 goal - too many security issues. Just kidding, I do believe that our building has wi-fi, although the security is iron-clad such that I don't think that anybody can actually access it, but that's not the point right?

NASA to form Lunar Science Institute

2007-10-10T08:11:00.000-07:00

According to NASAwatch, Alan Stern announced at the DPS (Division for Planetary Sciences) meeting yesterday that NASA plans to create a NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI) patterned on the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI).

The initial selection would be of 4 to 5 lead teams at a cost of $1-2 million each, and like the NAI, the NSLI would be managed by NASA Ames Research Center.

This is pretty exciting news, and in conjunction with the new LASER (Lunar Advanced Science and Exploration Research) R&A program and last year's LSSO (Lunar Sortie Science Opportunities) program, the participating scientist program for LRO, not to mention an increase in lunar-related grants through several of NASA's other R&A lines (PGG, Cosmochem, PIDDP), the lunar community is sitting pretty good right now.

Which is important, and well timed, because a large percentage of the lunar community hail from the Apollo era, and frankly are approaching, or have already reached, retirement age. By the time we get back to the Moon in (theoretically) 2018, they will be gone and we will be in desperate need of a few good lunar scientists. Now, scientists don't just sprout out of nowhere, it takes a good 10 years of training (grad school plus postdocs) to produce a decent scientist, so by priming the system now with a small investment in R&A, NASA is actually showing some forethought and is right on schedule to maintain a viable lunar community for the next era of exploration. Way to go NASA (or, rather, Alan Stern), it's nice to see someone thinking beyond the next election cycle.

Dawn has launched!

2007-09-27T08:25:00.000-07:00

Congrats to the Dawn team on a successful launch!

Space and Pop Culture

2007-09-25T08:43:00.000-07:00

Interesting article in the NYTimes today on the ways that the space age has influenced Pop Culture

In fact the whole Science Times today is dedicated to "The Space Age" in celebration of the anniversary of Sputnik. Some good stuff in there, well worth a read.

The neuroscience behind liberals vs conservatives

2007-09-11T14:31:00.000-07:00

It's not just your imagination, liberals really do think differently than conservatives, according to a paper that came out today in Nature Neuroscience:

Previous psychological studies have found that conservatives tend to be more structured and persistent in their judgments whereas liberals are more open to new experiences. The latest study found those traits are not confined to political situations but also influence everyday decisions.

Did you know that Google Earth has a flight simulator?

2007-09-04T13:00:00.000-07:00

Haven't tried it yet, but it seems like an excellent way to waste time. Here's the instructions for finding the easter egg.

This made me laugh today...

2007-08-31T13:07:00.001-07:00

Via xkcd

Adventures in Meteor Crater

2007-08-23T10:16:00.000-07:00

So I haven't had any posts for a while. Part of my lame excuse for that is that I was at a conference/field trip in AZ. The main purpose of the field trip was to go to Meteor Crater, and the main purpose of this post is to brag that I got to hike around inside Meteor Crater. The general public is not allowed you see, only people that are doing research on the crater, or in the extremely rare event that a field trip like this is arranged do people get to hike down into the crater.

So to justify this post, I decided that it should have something to do with either pop culture or space policy. I couldn't really come up with much on the policy front, I guess visiting an impact site always makes you think about the possibilities of the next impact and what we are doing about it, but that's a little obvious. The pop culture link, though, is surprisingly easy: do you see that trail in the image above? That is the route we took into the crater and it is the same route that was used in the filming of the 1984 movie "Starman". I love that movie: "I watched you very carefully. Red light stop, green light go, yellow light go very fast."

Former Karl Rove Staffer Moves to NASA as Mike Griffin's White House Liaison

2007-08-02T08:24:00.001-07:00

Meet Jane Cherry, NASA's new white house liaison...

A little background via Daily Cos:
Jane is apparently the child of Bush loyalist parents who were big names on the Arkansas GOP scene. After graduating college in 2004, she has had a distinguished "career" working for the White House since way back in 2005, starting as a lowly staff assistant and working her way up the ladder until sometime later in 2005 when she become Associate Director of Political Affairs under Karl Rove where she remained until last week when she was appointed to NASA.

According to the Daily Kos article, under Rove, "Jane was involved in the US Attorney removal scandal, and is on the record (page 31) as such. And Jane had one of those infamous gwb43.com secret e-mail addresses. Jane and Monica Goodling discussed Goodling's "research" on people."

I have to agree with NASAWatch on this one:

First NASA gets George Deutsch, another young political appointee. We all remember what he did. Then FEMA's former Deputy Director Patrick Rhode (a pal of Michael Brown's) is given a hiding place at NASA. Now, an overtly political White House staffer (it was her job to be overtly political) who is under at least one cloud with regard to ethics - suddenly lands at NASA where she gets a $60,000-plus pay raise.

Is NASA turning to a dumping ground for young Bush loyalists of questionable capability? Based on her political shenanigans at the White House, what could she possibly bring of value to NASA? Right now NASA needs to be steering clear of politics and focusing on the tasks at hand. Bringing young political hacks to NASA will only create problems.

Oooh, pretty

2007-08-01T06:49:00.000-07:00

NASA recently release what they are calling the "most detailed true-color image of the entire Earth to date." Using a collection of satellite-based observations, scientists and visualizers stitched together months of observations of the land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a seamless, true-color mosaic of every square kilometer (.386 square mile) of our planet.

Girl Scout Camp

2007-07-27T06:33:00.000-07:00

So I just got back from Girl Scout camp. No, seriously.

It's been about 20 years since the last time I went to Girl Scout Camp, but it was pretty much how I remembered, with the campfires and the singing and hiking and swimming and what not. Except this camp specializes in incorporating NASA activities into their programs, which is too cool. One of the things they like to do is to have scientists come and hang out with the girls so they can see that scientists are people too, and this year, I was that scientist.

I hung out with the girls, went on their hikes, did arts and crafts. Turns out I'm pretty good at archery, or at least better than your average 9 year old girl. And we talked. They asked lots of great questions. I like using these opportunities to size up the world and see how NASA is doing with outreach and spreading its message. I use my family for this a lot too, but kids are much better because they aren't afraid of looking stupid and they will ask you literally anything that pops into their heads.

The most popular question I was asked is why Pluto is no longer a planet. They are still pretty upset about that, but they do seem to have accepted the fact, they just want to understand the reasons behind it.

Nobody asked me if we faked the Moon landing (something I get asked by adults all too frequently), which I take as a positive sign.

They seemed very concerned that the world was going to end, they wanted to know if the Earth was going to blow up, if the Moon was going to blow up, if the Moon was going to crash into the Earth, if the Sun was going to explode, and so on and so on. I hope I didn't give any of them nightmares when I explained about the Sun going red giant in another 5 billion or so years and swallowing the earth, perhaps I shouldn't have fed those flames.

They all wanted to know if I had been in space and how many times I had been to the Moon. I asked one group when was the last time people went to the Moon, they said last year (so cute!). They seem to think that we go to Mars pretty regularly too.

I was a little saddened to learn that most of them didn't know what a geologist was, and a lot of the brownies (6-8 yr olds) had never heard of NASA. Can you imagine? The older girls did better, probably in part because they've been coming to this camp for a while.

They asked a lot of questions about what it's like to be a scientist. What I liked about the job and what I didn't. I told them one of the things I liked was that I could wear whatever I wanted, and one girl asked if I could wear my pajamas - apparently that is the ideal job from a 10 yr old's perspective, one in which pjs are a fashion statement.

All in all, a good week. I had tons of fun and hopefully the girls learned something.

Happy Apollo 11 Anniversary

2007-07-20T06:39:00.000-07:00

Today marks the 38th anniversary of the day that humankind first set foot on the Moon (unless you're Australian, apparently they mark that on the 21st). Here at JSC they are celebrating with a Grand Reopening of the Saturn V facility and a sneak preview of the movie "In the Shadow of the Moon" which I am really looking forward to seeing.

Agency wide, NASA is referring to today as the inaugural "First Footprints" celebration, an annual commemoration of one of humankind's most amazing and important accomplishments. I like that, I'm surprised that we haven't made more of a big deal of this in the past. I hope it catches on.

The Academic Life

2007-07-16T11:28:00.000-07:00

As my post-doc comes to an end in just a few months, I've been spending a lot of time lately thinking about my future and what I'm going to do with it. I decided long ago that the tenure-track lifestyle was not for me, but every time I get to one of these decision points in my career, I find myself questioning everything.

Today I stumbled upon this blog entry from someone who chose the academic life and is now leaving. Here is my favorite part:

I know a lot of people think the "utter pressure, sink or swim in the whirlpool" method is a great way to motivate pre-tenure people to extreme productivity, but in my case the primary result was an extreme crushing of my soul, the suppression of my ability to really function well as a scientist, and ultimately my decision that there are other exciting things in the world that I could be doing...

So now I'm done pondering that question. No tenure track for me. I prefer my soul uncrushed, thank you very much. I have a hard time understanding why anyone would put themselves through that and yet, there is certainly no shortage of people trying.

Of course the soft-money route is hardly any easier these days, particularly in planetary geology with NASA funding so hard to come by and absolutely no safety net to fall back on. I talk to too many people that are spending all of their time writing grant proposals and have no time left to actually do any science, not to mention the constant stress of not knowing if you are going to have a paycheck next week. That is not exactly what I signed up for when I decided to become a scientist.

I can always do another post-doc of course, the low pay and lack of respect are almost worth it to get to do the science (though this postdoc/blogger might argue that with me). In the end though, one cannot be a post-doc forever (well, one probably can, but it is definitely not recommended), at some point I will have to get a "real job" (or so my Dad keeps telling me). Is it any wonder I'm thinking about leaving academia, as so many of my friends and colleagues already have?

How sad is that? I really fear for the future of science in this country.

Rainy days and Mondays always get me down.

Nuke the Moon?

2007-07-16T06:29:00.000-07:00

This guy has some pretty convincing evidence for why we should nuke the Moon.

Drive Update - the last 2 episodes available on Monday

2007-07-12T14:37:00.000-07:00

Fox has announced that "Drive" will be available for streaming as of Monday, July 16, at myspace.com/fox and on Fox affiliate sites.

Goodbye Drive, we hardly knew ya

2007-07-11T07:00:00.000-07:00

Well, looks like we are never going to see those last 2 episodes of Drive. I hate FOX. After scheduling them to be burned off on July 4th and then moving them to July 13th, they have now been pulled completely off the schedule with no plans to show them anywhere. For those of you that want to know, check out this great interview with exectutive producers Tim Minear and Craig Silverstein about what would have happened had the series continued.

Poor Tim Minear.

Dead Like Me Movie!

2007-07-09T13:22:00.000-07:00

Good news for me and the four other people out there who liked Dead Like Me - according to the good folks at TVSquad, they are making a made-for-DVD movie! And if it does well, they may bring the series back to life. The one big catch - no Mandy Patinkin (he's busy with his other show). I'm not sure how the reapers are going to manage without their fearless leader, but, I am so willing to shell out my cash to find out.

Some budget relief for NASA?

2007-07-01T07:25:00.000-07:00

Via NASAwatch...

Senators Hutchison, Landrieu, Mikulski and Shelby Pledge to Introduce NASA Funding Amendment to the Fiscal Year 2008 Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill to provide $1 billion in additional funding for NASA when the bill reaches the Senate floor.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=22965

On the next season of LOST...

2007-06-07T06:38:00.000-07:00

I know that the "snake in the mailbox" changes everything and I understand that there might be some changes on LOST next season, but I think they've gone too far...

Courtesy ThisJustIn.com via Watch with Kristin

Serenity flys to station

2007-06-04T07:20:00.000-07:00

So this blog tends to cover space and pop culture, usually two very different topics, but every once in a while, the two come together and it's beautiful.

Case in point, my friend Flygal pointed me to this site:
BREAKING ATMO - Here's How It Is...
which details the efforts from some of NASA's Browncoats to bring the joys of Firefly and Serenity to the astronauts aboard station.

How shiny is that?

Thanks Ed

2007-06-03T15:36:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to thank Ed who has added this blog to his extensive collection of space-related blogs at Space Feeds!

And check out the cool new widget I added at the bottom of the sidebar, it's all the latest posts from all the blogs on Ed's blogroll.

Did everyone see Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed on the History Channel last weekend?

2007-06-01T07:47:00.000-07:00

If you missed it over the weekend, don't worry, they're going to repeat it a couple more times. It's a really well done "2-hour special exploring why the emotional impact of the Star Wars Saga remains as relevant as ever."

With interviews from the likes of J.J. Abrams, Joss Whedon, Kevin Smith, and Steven Colbert, as well as a number of academics and for some reason Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich, the show explores many of the archetypes developed though the films and how Lucas borrowed from everything from Greek mythology and American westerns to the Bible and why 30 years later Star Wars still resonates with so many people.

I highly recommend it.

The History Channel's website has lots of cool short clips and other resources too.

And while you are setting your Tivo, don't forget to schedule it to tape the Robot Chicken's Star Wars special on June 17!

What is up with the Lunar Robotic Program? - Update

2007-05-25T07:52:00.000-07:00

Well, it looks like Marshall is keeping it's Lunar Robotic Program office. According to an article in today's Huntsville Times (via NASAwatch), "The 32-employee Lunar Precursor Robotic Program office will be included in the NASA budget at $20 million a year for the next six years. Also, the office will continue to manage two planned NASA lunar probe missions and begin a new assignment: mapping the moon to find sites of scientific value, Shelby's office said."

I don't always agree with Keith Cowing, but he's right on the money here:

Reversing the decision could become a problem for Griffin and his successors, and "it opens up their decisions for further second-guessing," said Keith Cowing, who runs NASAWatch.com.

"It makes a joke of any leadership on Mike Griffin's part if he makes a decision and then he reverses it because Senator Shelby or (Rep. Bud) Cramer tell him to back off," Cowing said. "How can NASA administrators actually manage if they constantly have Congress reversing decisions they don't like?"

It's hard to blame Mr. Griffin though, it's not like he had a lot of options here, when Congress tells you to do something, you can't just say no. And it wasn't just one congressman, Senator Shelby convinced Senator Mikulski and Representative Mollohan, the chairs of the respective appropriations committees which oversee NASA's budget (i.e. people you don't want to piss off). I don't think Mr. Griffin had any choice here, I think the blame lies with Congress who shouldn't have made the request in the first place. Congress' job is not to micromanage. Does Sen. Shelby really think that he knows better how to get us back to the Moon than NASA does?

Breaking news: Evidence of water found on Mars!

2007-05-22T06:36:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's true. Once again those little energizer-bunny rovers have made news because once again one of them has discovered evidence of water in Mars' past.

Doesn't it seem like every few months we find new and exciting evidence of water on Mars? Is anybody else impressed by how they can continue to make the same headline newsworthy over and over again?

Okay, in all seriousness, what is truly impressive to me is that they continue to make new discoveries after wandering around for so long. I think that really says something about the complexity of Mars, not to mention the complexity of the rovers.

The cynic in me read this headline and thought that the rover teams are sending out press releases for some minor thing in an attempt to stay in the news and stay relevant and not have their extended mission funding cut and their rovers turned off. But actually, this looks to be a genuine find.

What the rover found was a patch of soil that is 90% silica - something you just can't do without a whole lot of water. It was discovered by the aging rover Spirit, who has a broken wheel that won't rotate anymore, and so it leaves a deep trench as it drags through the soil, which is what exposed the silica-rich stuff (in fact several of it's recent discoveries have been made this way).

The patch of soil has been named "Gertrude Weise," after a player in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Seriously, they named a patch of soil after some random baseball player. I looked her up, she wasn't even a particularly famous AAGPBL player (by which I mean that there was no character based on her in A League of Their Own), and she died last year, so she will never even know about the great honor bestowed upon her.

Like many in the planetary community, I dream of one day having something in the solar system named after me, an asteroid or a crater, but a patch of soil? meh.

This made me laugh today...

2007-05-16T09:35:00.000-07:00

I can always count on Homestarrunner to amuse me. Today's adventure involves some mysterious DNA evidence.

What is up with the Lunar Robotic Program?

2007-05-11T11:26:00.000-07:00

In the beginning, the plan was to go to the Moon, first with robots, then with people. An extensive precursor program (the Robotic Lunar Exploration Program, or RLEP - pronounced R-Lep) was planned following the model put forth by the Apollo program with it's Lunar Orbiter and Ranger missions. There was to be first an orbiter - the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which is on track and should launch in 2008 - followed by a lander, probably to a polar location, maybe even a permanently shadowed region, followed by another orbiter, then another lander.

Then people started doing the math, and realized we couldn't afford all that and it was pared down to the LRO and 1 lander. The program's named was also changed for no apparent reason from RLEP, to the Lunar Precursor and Robotic Program (LPRP) and the program office was moved to Marshall (from Ames, and before that Goddard).

Along the way, cost estimates for the lander started to balloon from an initial New Frontier's Class mission to something in the several billion dollar range from the rumors I heard. So the lander was scrapped all together and we were told it was not needed, as Scott Horowitz, NASA's exploration chief, made perfectly clear at the Lunar Science Meeting in Tempe a couple months ago when he said that all he really needs is "a damn good map," which LRO will provide.

With no "program" to speak of, the LPRP program office at Marshall was to be shut down and management of LRO (and it's tag-along package LCROSS) was to be moved to HQs. But then Congress got involved, or specifically Sen Shelby (R-Al), who wanted to keep a little piece of the Moon in his backyard and the 32 jobs that go with it (although in reality, none of those people would have been laid off, just reassigned to other duties). Sen Shelby was apparently able to convince Sen. Mikulski (D-Md.) and Rep. Mollohan (D-W.Va.), who respectively chair the Senate and House appropriations panels with NASA oversight, that this was important and last month they wrote a letter to Administrator Griffin proclaiming their displeasure over the closing of the Marshall office and directed $20M "be provided to continue planning for a potential LPRP mission during the remainder of the year." (See the recent article in Science.)

Mr Griffin response reiterated the "all we need is a damn good map" mantra:

“I do not need a robotic lander to reduce risks for the human landings,” Griffin said. “Everybody who has carefully looked at that has said you don’t need it.”

Griffin said such a mission, while “it would be nice to have,” is not necessary. “Right now, the budget is such that I have to focus on what’s necessary,” he said, adding that the decision to cancel the lander was not taken lightly.

“The lander wasn’t the first thing I removed from the program. It was the last thing,” he said.

It's not immediately clear how NASA will respond to the congressional directive, or more importantly, what they are going to do with that $20M, since there is no sign that they are going to change their mind about sending a lander.

I have a few problems with this situation.

First of all, I'd really like to see a lander. For science reasons obviously, but also because I'm not convinced we know enough about the conditions at the poles to start putting up a permanent base there. In particular, the electrostatic conditions in a place like the rim of Shackleton crater (the currently favored site) which is always near the terminator, may make life very hard to deal with for the astronauts and their equipment, or maybe it will be fine, but we don't really know and a lander could definitely help us find out. There are many other unknowns and risks that a lander could help us reduce, biological experiments on the reactivity of the soil and the radiation environment, for example. Deciding whether these things are "necessary" or just "useful" is above my pay grade, as they say, but if it were up to me, I would say necessary.

Secondly, I think it's ridiculous that Congress is trying to dictate to NASA how it should be run at this level. Oversight is one thing, I am a firm believer in oversight, but this is not oversight, it's practically an earmark. NASA so strapped for cash right now that we are darn near begging in the streets, and now they are going to have to cough up $20M for a project that is never going to go anywhere.

I realize that many of you are probably thinking about now that my problem #2 contradicts my problem #1 - I want NASA to fund the stupid lander, but I'm mad at Congress for forcing them to keep the program office open. What I really want is for Congress to fund NASA at an appropriate level for them to accomplish all the things that Congress has asked them to do and to let NASA figure out the best way to do it. And I want NASA to stop basing their decisions on whether or not we can afford it and instead decide the best course of action and do it, even if it takes a little longer. NASA often uses the phrase "pay-as-you-go" but they don't believe it. Of course, Congress keeps putting timetables on things (Ahh, Congress and their timetables), like phase-out of the shuttle and when the CEV has to be ready that force NASA's hand. So they are both in my doghouse.

Going to the Moon on a budget is hard, but going to the Moon unprepared will be disastrous.

Defending Peer Review on the Floor of the House

2007-05-04T11:28:00.000-07:00

Thank God for the levelheaded members of the House Committee on Science and Technology!

Today's hero is Rep. Baird, who, as the Chair of the Research Subcommittee, successfully defended the peer review process from overzealous republicans yesterday by helping to defeat two ridiculous amendments to the NSF Reauthorization Act that would have cut the funding for several specific studies that were considered "frivolous", such as a study of "accuracy in the cross-cultural understanding of others' emotions". Mr. Baird pointed out that "The scientific merit of a federal research grant often isn't obvious from "a cursory examination of the title or an abstract, that's why we have peer review." The man had clearly done his homework too, he went on to explain that the emotions study, for example, has been endorsed by the U.S. Army Research Institute because its findings could help soldiers correctly read the emotional expressions of people from other cultures and so avoid an accidental firefight that could kill fellow soldiers and innocent civilians.

The amendments were defeated by votes of 195-222 and 126-292, which I find a bit scary.

Way to go Mr. Baird!

The Chronicle of Higher Ed has a good article about it today.

This made me laugh today...

2007-04-29T06:09:00.001-07:00

What is a "scientist"?

2007-04-23T11:35:00.001-07:00

The note below popped up today on a listserve I subscribe to. The author, Emily Monosson is writing a book on balancing family and science tentatively titled Motherhood: The Elephant in the Laboratory.

Hi all. A couple of weeks back, while talking about the women/science/motherhood book someone asked how would I define a scientist. It seemed like a good question - and I didn't have a really good answer. Some women with Ph.D.s who now teach high school science, write text books etc. wonder if they are still "scientists," I would say yes, others may not.

For the book I am working on, I'd like to discuss how the scientific community defines "a scientist," who would AAAS, NSF etc. consider a scientist? How would you define a scientist?

Additionally, what does it take to be considered a "successful" scientist? Or how would one define "success" in science?

What is a scientist? What a great question. It's one of those deceptively difficult things that you assume you know the answer to, until you actually try to put it into words. Kind of like, what is a planet?

For my part, I'm in the "once a scientist, always a scientist" camp. Being a scientist isn't about how much time you spend in the lab or how long your list of publications is. It's about how you think, how you approach a problem, the way that you see the world.

Being a "successful scientist" though, is another thing altogether. I would say that requires such things as well cited publications in peer reviewed journals, successful grant proposals, the respect of colleagues, successful graduate students, etc. Of course, you can be a scientist and be successful in other fields (like being an astronaut, or a senator, or both if you're really ambitious), but that's different from being a "successful scientist".

What do you think? Leave a note in the comments and I'll forward them to Emily.

I don't work in building 44

2007-04-21T16:23:00.000-07:00

I'm fine, don't worry, I don't work in building 44.

So by now, pretty much everyone has heard about the events at JSC on Friday. I didn't know any of the people involved. Building 44 is clear on the other side of JSC from my office. I was in the lab all afternoon with no windows or internet access, I barely knew what was happening until it was over.

Man, JSC has been in the press for all the wrong reasons lately.

Some thoughts:

Does tragedy beget tragedy. I have to wonder if the gunman was emboldened by the VA Tech shootings? Though apparently he bought the gun a month ago, maybe he had it planned since then?

He went out to lunch with his boss/victim yesterday. Had he already decided then what he was going to do? What do you think they talked about? Do you think he was looking for a reason in that conversation - a reason to do it, or to not do it?

I had to go into the office this afternoon and I have to say I found things shockingly normal. I biked right past building 44. There was nothing to suggest anything out of the ordinary had happened, except the three news vans set up in Rocket Park. Which, by the way, is nothing compared to the Lisa Nowak deal, there were dozens of news vans all over town for that. What does that say about our society?

Don't you dare touch my Chocolate!

2007-04-17T07:20:00.000-07:00

OMG, it's an emergency! They are out to destroy chocolate as we know it! And by "they" I mean the Grocery Manufacturers of America, with the support of the Chocolate Manufacturers of America and, who else, Hershey Co. Stupid Hershey. Go right now to Don't Mess With Our Chocolate and express your outrage.

"Chocolate is an indulgence that everyone can afford, and it provides comfort, pleasure and happiness. It truly is one of the worlds most unique and special foods.

However, if some members of the U.S. Chocolate Industry have their way, it will negatively change the quality of chocolate you love. Their plan is to change the basic formula of chocolate in order to use vegetable fat substitutes in place of cocoa butter, and to use milk substitutes in the place of nutritionally superior milk. These changes will have adverse effects on the eating, physical and nutritional quality of chocolate, and beg the question: What consumer benefit is associated with implementing these changes? The answer is none.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has a chocolate standard of identity requiring manufacturers to use approved ingredients in making chocolate, and it protects the consumer from any substitution of inferior ingredients. As a result, the Chocolate Industry must obtain approval from the Food and Drug Administration to make any changes.

The U.S. Chocolate Industry, through its Chocolate Manufacturers of America (CMA), and in collaboration with the Grocery Manufacturers Association, have petitioned the Food and Drug Association (FDA) to change the current requirements for chocolate."

Yuri's Night - Space nerds come out to play

2007-04-17T06:54:00.000-07:00

Keith Cowing of NASAwatch has a great opinion piece up about his impressions of Yuri's Night at Ames last week. Yuri's Night, for those who are unfamiliar, began several years ago as a small series of ad hoc parties to celebrate the first flight of a human in space - Yuri Gagarin, on 12 April 1961. Over the past few years the event has quickly spread and has become a global phenomenon - with parties now sponsored all over the planet - including the Arctic and Antarctica. This party at Ames was probably the biggest to date, I've seen it described as a "rave with powerpoints" and compared to Burning Man, it must have been quite a shindig, which I had been there. There was a party here in Houston, but I missed that one too. I really like the idea of Yuri's Night, I hope that the phenomenon continues to spread and grow. It's a great opportunity to engage the public, and to remind NASA folks that space exploration is fun, not just work.

This made me laugh today...

2007-04-02T14:37:00.000-07:00

http://xkcd.com/c242.html

It's funny because it's true.

This made me laugh today...

2007-04-02T11:19:00.000-07:00

Sheldon takes a meeting with Joss Whedon

Gumby's First Episode: Gumby on the Moon

2007-03-24T16:11:00.001-07:00

So. Many. Questions. How did Gumby get to the Moon? What is that chain around his waist? Why are there 3 other Moons? How awesome is it that his dad chose to use a ladder rather than bother with a silly rocket? Do you think the red triangle things were the inspiration for those Star Wars dudes? How high do you think they were when they wrote this? Where's Pokey?

LPSC part 2 - NASA night

2007-03-22T15:21:00.000-07:00

Sorry about dropping off the face of the Earth for a week. I had the flu, but I'm doing much better now, thanks for caring. LPSC is over of course, but I wanted to add some more comments about the week, lest you think it's all about the shoes. Last Monday LPSC hosted what is known in the biz as "NASA night" when the bigwigs from headquarters come down to give us the lay of the land and listen patiently while we berate them for not giving us enough money.

Last year, NASA night almost broke out into a giant brawl after Mary Cleave spoke about how she didn't understand why we were angry after the announcement of major cuts to Research and Analysis (R&A) funding. Good times. I think we must have scared her off, she who is retiring in April, didn't show her face in Houston. Instead we were treated to Jim Green, the new head of planetary sciences, who was honest and sympathetic and actually listened to what we had to say. It was incredible.

Here are my notes from the meeting:

* The National Academies has created a "Planetary Performance Assessment Committee" to evaluate hoe well the Planetary division is addressing strategies, goals, and priorities from academy reports (this is a requirement of the NASA Auth Act of 2005)

* The current round of Discovery and Scout AOs are on track, with 3 full missions and 3 missions of opportunity selected for further study.

* M3 is on track to launch on Chandrayaan-1

* Phoenix and MSL are on track for '07 and '09 launches, respectively

* Dawn's launch has slipped to June '07.

* JUNO will launch Aug '11

* MGS is almost certainly unrecoverable. RIP.

* There will be "concept" funding for outer planet missions

* The Deep Space Network (which is still seriously underfunded and heading for trouble) has been transferred to SOMD - in theory this is because SOMD deals with all of the other communication systems, so this is just consolidating that, but I think it is a really stupid move because the Space Ops folks aren't going to prioritize it the same way that we do.

* The NEO program has been transferred to ESMD, I'm not really sure if that's good, bad, or neutral in the long run, but it draws a clear line between studying asteroids for planetary protection purposes vs. science.

* Some of the 15% cut to R&A funding from last year has been recovered (about 5.8M - though it's not clear where exactly that money came from). It will be focused towards some of the programs that were hardest hit by the funding crunch (e.g. astrobiology, instrument development, and Mars fundamental research).

* It was noted that R&A currently accounts for ~14% of the budget, which is not even close to the 25% that the National Academy decadal survey recommends. Let's hope that comes up in the new "Planetary Performance Assessment Committee" meetings.

* There was some cheers for the new rapid notification policy whereby those who have been chosen to receive grants (or not chosen) will be told within a few weeks after the decision is made, rather than months, sometimes approaching a year, that it used to take. Now only those proposals on the bubble will have to wait. Sometimes all it takes is a little common sense, people.

* There is one exciting new pot of R&A money, for a program called LASER (the acronyms are really ridiculous) - Lunar Advanced Science and Exploration Research. These funds are for basic lunar science, exploration-related applied science, data analysis from PDS data, and even for digitizing or acquiring old datasets. It will be co-funded with ESMD at a rate of ~2-3M/yr. Not bad.

Those are the highlights. All in all, a productive meeting and a hopeful sign of things to come.

There was a second meeting on Wednesday in which Doug Cooke was supposed to come and talk about Lunar stuff, but he was sick (there was a lot of that going around), so John Connolly stepped in at the last minute and did a fine job of covering the hq-speak slides (very pretty with little substance). It was pretty basic stuff about Constellation and returning to the Moon. There wasn't much new information for me, but I bet that the scientists who don't pay attention to much besides their own science probably learned a lot. Impressively, Wendell Mendell came up after John and, also using Doug's slides, gave a short history of the Constellation program. I think Wendell could talk for 30 minutes using anybody's slides, now that's a talent.

Live from LPSC, part 1 - the shoes

2007-03-13T20:06:00.000-07:00

So, the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference is in full swing here. The science is pretty good overall. Lots of really cool new pictures from Mars. I also learned today that the Earth's water may not have come from meteorites and comets, but actually may have condensed onto dust grains in the very earliest days of solar system formation. Neat huh?

I love the planetary science community, but I have to say, fashion is not our forte. Today I started to notice the footwear of some of my compatriots, and it wasn't pretty. Some things I saw:

A guy (who gave a talk today) wearing nice khakis and a polo shirt (not quite a suit and tie, but not unreasonable), and on his feet - teva sandals and socks, navy socks with gold toes.

A guy in jeans and a polo with burgundy (not red, not purple, burgundy) Chuck Taylors with a kind of lacy or tapestry-ish pattern. That combination definitely takes guts, but it just wasn't quite working.

Several other guys in Birkenstocks and socks.

Many people were sporting what were clearly their "dress sneakers" or their "good hiking boots" - this is a common fashion trend in the geology world, and actually it can work just fine with jeans if you want to go casual, but tennis shoes and ties are not a great combination (not even with bolo ties made from your favorite meteorite).

I am noticing a lot more black tennis shoes with black dress pants, which, while still sad, is certainly an improvement over white tennis shoes with black pants.

Happy Birthday Buffy!

2007-03-09T21:03:00.000-08:00

Today marks the 10th anniversary of first airing of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the series, not the crappy movie, that totally doesn't count). Given the way that most of Buffy (the character) birthday's turned out, let's just hope this day doesn't end in tragedy.

Some coverage of the event can be found at TV.com, Whedonesque, and it's even today's featured article at Wikipedia

Jane Espenson joins Battlestar Galactica full time

2007-03-08T10:43:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite Buffyverse writers, Jane Espenson, responsible for such classic Buffy "Espensodes" as Band Candy and Triangle will be joining the writing staff of BG full time next season after having written 2 episodes this season (including Dirty Hands from 2 weeks ago). I guess she impressed them. Yay!

I so want to join the Order of Science Scouts of Exemplary Respute and Above Average Physique

2007-02-26T06:42:00.000-08:00

The O.O.T.S.S.O.E.R.A.A.A.P.

Much like the Girl Scouts, you can earn badges for doing certain things or demonstrating knowledge of certain subjects. As it turns out, I already qualify for several of their badges:

Haven't quite earned that last one yet, but I'm getting dangerously close. Go to their website to check out all of their badges.

No new money for NASA in the 07 Budget

2007-02-21T06:34:00.000-08:00

Because the Republican congress failed to do their job last year and didn't pass the 07 budget, the new congress was forced to deal with that on top of the 08 budget (not to mention learning how to be in charge again, hiring new staff, moving offices, welcoming new members, oh, and there's that whole Iraq War thing happening). So, they decided to punt - rather than carefully considering, debating and passing the budgets from the various approprations committees, or even rolling them together and passing one massive "omnibus" budget bill, they decided to extend the continuing resolution through the end of the year so they can focus on next year's budget. This basically continues the 2006 budget through 2007, which in theory isn't so bad, everybody loses out on inflationary increases, but otherwise it maintains the status quo. The problem is that NASA and NSF and NIST and many other science agencies were due for big increases this year, NASA for the Vision and the rest due to the whole compettitiveness inititive.

Congress had said that they were going to "allow some flexibility" where it was needed, giving us a little hope, and in fact, NSF and NIST both got small increases over the '06 numbers ($335M and $50M, respectively), but unfortunatly, NASA got nothing.

Senator Mikulski said in her press release that it was unfortunate, but it was the best they could do:

“While I would have liked to have increased funding for NASA, there was simply not enough extra funding available for us to do so. Within the limits of NASA’s FY 06 operating plan, we added an extra $460 million to exploration while protecting other critical NASA programs in science and aeronautics. With only seven months left in this fiscal year, I believe NASA will be able to manage their programs in exploration with minimal impact to the overall schedule.

It's going to be a tough year for NASA, and frankly, the '08 budget is not looking that much better.

Oh that poor cat

2007-02-15T11:39:00.001-08:00

Ever wonder how a cat would react to microgravity?

Apparently cats have an automatic "righting system" built into them which makes sure they always land on their feet. In the absence of gravity though, the cat feels like it is constantly falling and can't "land", so their righting system puts them into an endless spin. Cool huh?

Also (via NASAwatch), in case you prefer dogs to cats: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwwlkF0C04k&eurl=

This made me laugh today...

2007-02-14T09:20:00.000-08:00

Valentine's has never been one of my favorite holidays, but I really enjoyed these Unfortunate Valentine's Day Cards.

Anousheh Ansari - Positive female astronaut role model

2007-02-13T13:25:00.000-08:00

In the wake of the diaper-wearing crazed-astronaut love-triangle ruckus comes news that Anousheh Ansari is going to team up with Homer "October Sky" Hickum to write her memoirs.

You may or may not remember that back in September, Anousheh became the world’s first female space tourist as the fourth paying customer to hitch a ride to the space station. It was a pretty big deal at the time, I read a number of articles on her, she got a soundbite or two on the news, of course that coverage pales in comparison to the kind of overwhelming non-stop coverage that Lisa Nowak garnered last week. But I don't want to talk about Lisa (ever again, please), let's talk about a positive female astronaut/entrepreneur role model:

I was frankly surprised by the attention Ansari received at the time of her flight, after all female astronauts are a pretty common sight these days. Is a space tourist so different?

I remember well the first “space tourist” Dennis Tito. That was a big story, we had entered a new era and all that. I vaguely remember hearing about #2, Mark Shuttleworth, but I had nearly forgotten there was a 3rd tourist, Greg Olsen, he got almost no press. I guess the media had decided by #3 that it was old hat, that is until the Japanese Businessman that was supposed to be #4 bowed out for medical reasons and his backup, Ansari was given the green light. Suddenly space tourism was a big deal again, a woman was going, and I read one article after another detailing her adventures.

I did a quick Google search to try and find some historical perspective. It was only 2 years after Yuri Gargarin’s first spaceflight that Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. It is now more that 5 years since Dennis Tito’s historic ride as the first space tourist.

Of course the situations are far different. Tereshkova’s flight was a novelty act and nothing more (arguably, she was the first “space tourist”, as she was simply along for the ride and was never allowed to take manual control of the spacecraft). She was sent into space simply to check a box, first women in space – check, one more “first” for the Soviet space program. It wasn’t until Sally Ride’s first flight in 1983, a full twenty years after Gargarin, that women finally became a real part of the space program.

Ansari, on the other hand, is far from a novelty act. A life-long space devotee, she is a commercial space entrepreneur who, along with her husband and brother-in-law, has co-founded the Dallas-based company Prodea which is developing the Explorer line of air-launched suborbital vehicles. She and other members of her family donated a sizable chuck of the money for the Ansari X-Prize competition (hence the name) and she remains involved in the X-Prize Foundation, particularly its educational outreach.

The Iranian-born Ansari does see herself as a role model. In an interview with Space.com, she said, “In my work and everything that I have always done, I have tried to be an example. I hope to inspire everyone—especially young people, women, and young girls all over the world, and in Middle Eastern countries that do not provide women with the same opportunities as men—to not give up their dreams and to pursue them.”

In the U.S., little girls may not need Ansari as a role model, they have never lived in a world where women can’t be astronauts or fly in space. But in the Middle East, she will be a powerful symbol of hope for the next generation. For that, I’m grateful that the headline “first woman space tourist” made it around the world.

Will we ever get to a point where “first woman” isn’t a milestone to be recorded? I doubt it. I think we just really likes “firsts”. I wonder, what if the first person to stand on Mars is a woman, will history also made a point to record when the first man hit the ground? Yeah, I think so.

Alan Stern named associate administrator for SMD

2007-02-13T06:33:00.000-08:00

NASA has finally announced the replacement for Mary Cleave who is retiring in April as AA for the Science Mission Directorate. Dr. Cleave was trained as a biologist and an engineer, but became an astronaut almost straight out of grad school (her Wikipedia entry). She was never really accepted by the science community, which is likely one, but certainly not the only, reason for the strained relationship between the greater NASA science community and HQs for the last couple of years. She felt we were constantly whining and we felt we weren't being listened too, it was a bad situation all around.

I think that Dr. Cleave did her best in what is a thankless job, especially during tough budget years, but I for one, will not be sad to see her go.

Dr. Stern is an interesting choice for replacement. I don't know a lot about him besides what was in the press release, but he is clearly a scientist and an active member of the planetary community, so he gets points for that. (Although according to his Wikipedia entry, he was very nearly an astronaut, but I won't hold that against him.)

Alan is from Colorado, a graduate of the Univ of Colorado, he is currently executive of the Southwest Research Institute's (SwRI’s) Space Science and Engineering Division. Which, I believe, is in Mark Udall's district. Mark being the chair of the House subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics. So they should get along well.

He is also the PI on the New Horizons mission to Pluto. I know that it's going to be a while before we get to Pluto (July, 2015), but even so, doesn't that seem like a conflict of interest? I wonder if they will make him relinquish that title while he is at HQ.

Can Dr. Stern make a difference at HQ? Can he do anything to improve communication with the science community and erase some of the bitterness that has been built up the last few years? I hope so.

Joss Whedon interview

2007-02-09T14:49:00.000-08:00

There's a great 4 part interview with Joss Whedon up at Geek Monthly. He talks mostly about the upcoming Buffy Season 8 comics, which I have to admit I am so excited about.

I don't normally read comics. Nothing personal, it's just never been my thing. But I gotta tell you, I would read the back of a triscuit box if Joss wrote it. And then I would re-read it and look for hidden layers of meaning. And then I would go online and see if I could find others who had read and dissected the layers of depth in the triscuit box and had drawn parallels to works on the back of other snack foods and then I would search out those snack foods and read their backs before re-reading the triscuit box once again to ensure that I could fully appreciate the genius that went into the triscuit box. Yeah, it's kind of a sickness.

Also, some of my other favorite Buffy writers are also going to be writing issues of the comic, including Jane Espenson and Drew Goddard. It's going to be so good.