Carnival Of Space #74

Thanks to a combination of having a lousy cold that had me shuffling and snuffling around like a cross between Igor and the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and really just not being motivated to write anything on the old site after AOL’s decision to scrap their Journals, I didn’t submit anything for this week’s [...]

Upcoming Outreach talks…

I have a few talks and lectures lined up for the near future. If you’re in the area, come along and say hi!

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Phoenix still working away…

To be brutally frank about it, time is now running out for NASA’s Mars Phoenix lander. The hours of daylight available for the lander’s solar panels are shrinking, and those long, endless “Midnight Sun” days are now just a memory. Now Phoenix sees the Sun setting, plunging her into darkness, and it is getting very, very [...]

Oppy on her way…

The Mars Exploration Rover OPPORTUNITY – or “Oppy” to her legions of friends and followers – is now fairly racing along the western side of Victoria Crater, taking in the last of the sights along the rim before gunning her engine and heading south towards her next (and almost certainly final) goal: Endeavour Crater, which [...]

MSL Saved… for now..?

Yesterday was a VERY important day for Mars scientists and enthusiasts alike. The next Big Thing for NASA – the almost 1 ton Mars Science Laboratory – is scheduled to be launched next October, but recently the program has had some big problems, financial as well as technical, and there had been rumours during the [...]