NASA night at DPS

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...

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

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!

Congrats to the Dawn team on a successful launch!

Space and Pop Culture

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

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?

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