What does JWST mean to Mars?

Some of the best images of Mars obtained using the Hubble Space Telescope. JWST could give us methane maps of the planet that approach this spatial resolution, but what are the costs for planetary science?

For those who thought that PSD's (NASA Planetary Science Directorate) budget woes came to a close along with the debt-ceiling increase, the bad news just keeps rolling in. Let's take a few minutes and analyze what consequences the recent dealings with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will have on our exploration of Mars.

Lessons Learned

August is the 8th anniversary of my enrollment at the University of Arizona's Planetary Science program. As such, I figured this might be a good time to present some advice for the incoming class of '16 (typical PTYS PhD programs take ~5 years). As always, this is specific to my own experience in my own field and things change rapidly in academia. Your mileage may vary.

Don’t mind the noise; we’re building a new Mission!

Welcome Back to the Moon! The view from the ILSR Field team in northern labrador. Read all about their adventures here!

It's the end of August and the change of seasons is in the air. Labour day is almost here, the US Open starts up tomorrow, and it's time for us to wrap up the ILSR Analogue programme with one more field deployment. As part of the famed "Anablog" I contributed a column which I've copied below. The original can be found here. For more information as it happens, keep up with the blog!

What’s changing as we move from SLAM to KRASH.

The end of the Sudbury Lunar Analogue Mission (SLAM) was, in a way, just the beginning. Almost immediately, our thoughts turned from the hectic two-hour cycle of Mission Control to think about how we would manage actual live astronauts in the field in addition to our robotic rover. Could we use the experience gained in June to our advantage? What could stay the same? What would need to change?

This weekend marks the culmination of that summer of planning. The team is now in the field and operations go LIVE on Monday, August 29 for the Kamestastin Research Analogue Site for Human exploration, better known in these parts as KRASH. KRASH brings us back to the Moon by heading up to Northern Labrador. There we will simulate two different missions. The first scenario will play out near the rim of Kamestastin Crater as two Astronauts, Anna Chanou and Raymond Francis, imagine themselves to be visiting a site that has been well-characterized by a precursor landed rover, as simulated in August of last year.

Landsat Image of Kamistastin (Mistastin) Crater. The golden area in the upper right has been dubbed the "Rim Site" whereas the lower left is "Disco (Discovery) Hill."

Review: Kessler's Martian Summer

A portion of the cover of Andrew Kessler's Book describing his experiences as an embedded author on the 2008 Mars Phoenix Mission.

What can I say about Andrew Kessler's Book "Martian Summer?" First off, it's a very different read from a very different perspective compared to many of the previous write-ups about space missions. Instead of detailing technical details and relying exclusively on the views of a member of the science team or the P.I. (Principal Investigator), the story provides Kessler himself as a bridge between the reader and the mission. In addition, the conversational tone makes it seem almost as if the story is a novelization of events. This is really where the text succeeds, for even though it is marred here and there with minor inaccuracies, it does one exceptional thing right: the text captures the feel of working in mission control better than any other. The result is an engrossing read that really brought the experience of my own Martian Summer back to me.

State of the Blog (2010-2011)

It's been another year since I began this experiment and one year since the last "State of the Blog" post. This writing business seems to be turning into a bit of a habit. It's been quite a year and there's lots to review. Some things I feel I have been doing forever, and it is a surprise to notice that many are only fairly recent developments.

The Sudbury Lunar Analogue Mission Wraps Up

The ROC-6 Rover plays tourist after a successful mission exploring the Sudbury Impact Structure. The rover is shown in front of the Giant Nickel in this photo from the Mission's Anablog.

I'm on the train back to Toronto from Mission Control for SLAM (the Sudbury Lunar Analogue Mission) and I have to say: it has been a stressful, yet rewarding, couple of weeks. In some ways I am reminded of how I felt following last year's DPS conference (as I expressed in a New Year's Eve Post). Certainly, I now feel more a part of the CPSX community than I did before. But what it really feels like is Phoenix Redux. Sure, it was only two weeks - with no Mars Time issues - but all the intensity was there. Now that it's over, I am a tad bit sad, but at the same time, I am proud of what we accomplished.

Let's go on a Mars Cruise!

A photograph of  the residential cruise ship "The World," docked in Melbourne as captured by wikipedia user VirtualSteve. Is this a good home for Mars Mission Control?

In the run up to this year's analogue space mission deployments at UWO, I'm reliving the good old days of 2008 vicariously through Andrew Kessler's account of the Phoenix Mission. In his book "Martian Summer," Kessler captures in plain language the energy as well as the highs and lows of working at Mission Control for a Martian Mission. I'll have more to say about the book once I finish reading it, but there was one early comment of his about an interesting countermeasure to working on Mars Time that piqued my interest. I'll get to that in a moment, but first let me describe what we mean by "Mars Time."