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Back Soon From Mars

I really, really should have visited Iceland before we started writing a novel set on Mars. If Texas is like a whole other country, Iceland is like a whole other not-quite-fully-terraformed planet.

Finally back in Reykjavik after a week’s trek through the hinterlands north of Eyjafjallajokull and two weeks of camping throughout the rest […]

James Cameron’s 3D Mars Camera

If James Cameron is so passionate about restoring the 3D camera to MSL/Curiosity, then…instead of lobbying, and urging, and taking his concerns to the NASA administrator, why didn’t he just pay for it out of pocket?

I don’t know that he didn’t, or didn’t offer to do so (the article doesn’t say), but it seems […]

Extremophiles on Mars

Well, not exactly – more like terrestrial microbes living in harsh environments like those Mars likely had some time back.

Minerals on Mars studied by the NASA rovers suggest water once flowed on the planet’s surface, but was very salty and acidic, raising doubts about whether it could have supported life.

But in 2007, Melanie […]

NASA Gives Opportunity Free Will

Okay, not really. But they are giving it the ability to autonomously select science targets based on general guidelines:

The new system, which NASA uploaded over the past few months, is called Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science, or AEGIS and it lets Opportunity’s computer examine images that the rover takes with its wide-angle navigation […]

ABNA: So Much for the Novel Contest

For those of you who know about the book: it made it into the top 100, but Labyrinth of Night didn’t make the cut to the final three.

Ah well. Back to looking for an agent the old-fashioned way.

Mars Needs Beano

More methane on Mars:

“Methane is quickly destroyed in the Martian atmosphere in a variety of ways, so our discovery of substantial plumes of methane in the northern hemisphere of Mars in 2003 indicates some ongoing process is releasing the gas,” said Michael Mumma of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “At […]

This, I Like

Let’s hope NASA can actually make something of this project – NASA Eyes Nuclear Reactor for Moon Base:

Supported at a cost of about $10 million a year, the Fission Surface Power Project this week awarded two contracts for power conversion units, used to turn the heat of nuclear reactions into electricity…

The converter design […]

McDonald’s on Mars

Commenter Wally expresses concern over the development of space:

Besides, who wants to go to McDonald’s Restaurant on Mars?

I do.

Not because I find the food appealing, but because of what the fact of a McDonald’s on Mars would say about the planet’s level of development. Shipping in from a distribution center on Earth […]

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