Alan Kerlin – Australian Science

Interview: Keri Bean—Mars meteorologist, Curiosity Rover team member

Alan Kerlin — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 00:24:25 +0000

Keri Bean in the NASA JPL Mars Yard, with the Curiosity test-bed twin ‘Maggie’

Keri Bean is a meteorologist specialising in the atmospherics of other planets. She is on the team operating the Curiosity Rover for NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission. Prior to MSL, Keri has had roles in the missions for other Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, a prototype Moon rover, the Phoenix Mars Lander, and the Hubble Space telescope. And she’s just 25 years old! That’s a pretty incredible CV to rack up already.

In this interview, Keri talks with me about her work on MSL and the other missions, plus how and why she got into space science. It all started when a tornado hit her pre-school.

Australian Science on SoundCloud.

Keri (centre) with many of the MSL team and ‘Scarecrow’, the other Curiosity test rover (Scarecrow is lighter than Curiosity so that it mirrors the lower Mars gravity).

A GIF of the partial solar eclipse by Mars moon Phobos, as captured by the Curiosity rover—an image capture task coordinated by Keri.

A photo of Phobos (highly zoomed it, and hence quite grainy) taken by Curiosity just after dusk on 21 September using one of its Mastcams, showing its ‘potato’ shape.

The ‘Chariot’ Lunar rover prototype for which Keri worked on camera design (and which James May managed to have a minor accident with when filming an episode of Top Gear!).

The Mars Phoenix Lander.

Cite this article:
Kerlin A (2012-11-12 00:24:25). Interview: Keri Bean—Mars meteorologist, Curiosity Rover team member. Australian Science. Retrieved: May 03, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/space/interview-keri-bean-mars-meteorologist-curiosity-rover-team-member/

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The nearest solar system to ours has an Earth-sized planet…

Alan Kerlin — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 00:03:22 +0000

Already there’s an artist’s impression of the
newly discovered ‘Alpha Centauri B a’

Yes—you read right. Alpha Centauri has a planet, and it is roughly the size of Earth. And at just 4.37 light years distance, it is theoretically reachable (with a whole lot of space travel development!) despite the frustrating limitations put on us by Mr Einstein.

In a paper appearing in the journal Nature today, lead author Xavier Dumusque (Geneva Observatory, Switzerland and Centro de Astrofisica da Universidade do Porto, Portugal) explains how they use the 3.6-metre telescope at the European Space Observatory’s La Silla Observatory in Chile to detect the tiny back-and-forth wobbles to a sun’s position that are caused by the gravitational mass of a planet revolving around it.

BUT don’t pack your bags yet. This planet is closer to its sun than Mercury is to our Sun. So close in fact that it orbits it in just 3.2 days. So close that its surface temperature is likely to be around 1200 degrees Celsius.

So not exactly in the much-sought-after ‘Goldilocks zone’—that orbital distance from a sun that would allow liquid water to exist on a planet, making it theoretically hospitable to life—as we know it anyway…

And besides, while 4.37 light years sounds pretty close—that’s some 56 trillion kilometres—56,000,000,000,000 kilometres. To put that into perspective, Voyager 1 is currently 18,353,400,000 kilometres from Earth, and it was launched in 1977! How’s that in light years? Just 16 hours, 59 minutes and 38 seconds of light-travel time. So we’d probably need something like Arthur C Clarke’s Rama spaceship to make the crossing, because we’d be in there for a very long time…

Let’s just clarify some details. Alpha Centauri isn’t one star, it’s actually three:

Alpha Centauri A (α Cen A)—about 110% the size of our Sun and 152% the luminosity
Alpha Centauri B (α Cen B)—about 91% the size of the Sun and half its luminosity
Proxima Centauri (α Cen C)—a red dwarf about 1/7 the size of the Sun (just 1.5 times the size of Jupiter) and less than 2% its luminosity

Alpha Centauri A and B form a binary 4.37 light years from us. The distance they are apart varies between the distance from the Sun to Saturn, and to Pluto. Proxima is gravitationally connected to the binary, but actually slightly closer—4.24 light years away, making it the closest star to our solar system. This system is so close to ours that most of the night sky viewed from any planet there would be recognisable to us, with most constellations virtually unchanged from how they look here.

Comparative star sizes

Alpha Centauri is very easy for us to find in the Southern Hemisphere. It’s the fourth-brightest star in our skies at magnitude -0.27, is in the constellation Centauri and is also one of the Pointers to the Southern Cross—the furthest one from Crux. It’s also the brightest of the two pointers and indeed the whole Centauri constellation—hence the alpha in the name. A reasonable amateur telescope or even good binoculars will resolve the binary system, with clear differences between the sizes of the two stars. You need a fair bit better telescope and very good seeing to find Proxima…

The discovery was made using the HARPS instrument on the ESO telescope—the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher spectograph. Rather than detecting sideways wobbles, HARPS was able to discern variations in the star’s light due to red-shifts and blue-shifts of the forward and away aspects of the star’s wobbles! Considering that the relative velocity this movement is in the order of the speed a baby would crawl, it’s a truly remarkable achievement.

No doubt others will be looking to verify the finding over coming months. There’s a small (10 to 25%) chance that the planet could be orbiting in an elliptical plane that has it passing in front of α Cen B from our perspective. If so, the other main way that planets are found could be used. This method detects periodic dips in the star’s brightness caused by the planet’s partial eclipse, and is the way the Kepler Space Telescope has been used to find hundreds of other exoplanets.

Sources:

http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1241/

http://www.nature.com/news/the-exoplanet-next-door-1.11605

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/earth-sized-planet-found-just-outside-solar-system

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/345756/description/The_alien_next_door

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_centauri

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2013 looks like being the year of the comet

Alan Kerlin — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 00:28:07 +0000

Comet Lovejoy, taken by astronaut Dan Burbankfrom the ISS

The astronomy world has been buzzing since it was announced on 24 September – C/2012 S1 is a new comet that could be lighting up our skies like none in living history by November 2013. It’s been named Comet ISON after the telescope research network used to discover it – the International Science Optical Network, using its 16″ telescope in Russia.

It has since been confirmed, using one of the scopes from the public subscription-based telescope network iTelescope.

With a trajectory taking it very close to the Sun, people are predicting that it could be bright enough to be visible in daylight, like Venus. Ernesto Guido, Giovanni Sostero & Nick Howes advised on the blog for the Associazione Fruiulana di Astronomia e Meteorologia that it will pass within 0.012AU of the Sun – with one AU being the distance of Earth from the Sun – at the end of November and about 0.4AU from Earth in early January 2014. That’s about 1.8 million kilometres from the Sun.

They predict it will become a naked-eye object from early November, and peak in negative magnitudes between 25 November and 3 December, with the brightest a whopping -10.6. Given the visual flop that was the last Haley’s Comet visit, they urge caution with these calculations. But calculations by others appear to confirm that it will likely be very bright.

In 2007, Comet McNaught (named after its discoverer Aussie Rob McNaught) peaked at -5.5.

A quick backgrounder on apparent magnitudes: this scale was formed in the Northern Hemisphere by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus some 2000 years ago. He thought that the star Vega was the brightest there was, and assigned it a magnitude of zero. There’s a lot of history and jiggery-pokery behind it (covered well on Wikipedia), but in a logarithmic scale, each five steps in magnitude equates to 100 times in brightness. So a Mag 5 star is 1% the brightness of Vega.

But then people travelled to the Southern Hemisphere and discovered the much brighter star Sirius. Let’s not forget the planets and the Moon. So instead of tossing the 2000 year old busted system out, they just took it into the negatives. So Sirius is -1, Venus at its maximum (which we are approaching now) is -5, the full Moon -13 and the Sun -27. The ISS is maximum -6 and is regularly (in this area anyway) -3.3.

Of course, C/2012 S1 could actually disintegrate if it gets too close to the Sun. Comet Lovejoy C/2011 W3 almost suffered such a fate, actually cutting through the Sun’s corona on 16 December 2011. But somehow it emerged intact and put on a magnificent display of about -4 for us in the Southern Hemisphere – if we were prepared to get up early in the mornings.

There’ll be another comet in our skies before then – C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) will swing by in March and is predicted to have a magnitude in between 0 and 1.

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A flawless launch for the world’s first commercial space mission

Alan Kerlin — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 08:31:08 +0000

Photo: Ben Cooper http://www.launchphotography.com/SpX-1.html

Elon Musk’s commercial space travel venture SpaceX has ticked off another global first – the first commercial space flight. Watch a replay of the launch first stage:

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket roared off the launch pad at 11:35am Canberra time, boosting the robotic Dragon capsule into a three-day chase of the International Space Station, carrying a NASA-commissioned resupply cargo. The media kit includes the full cargo manifest – 905 kilograms each way.

What it doesn’t mention is that the cargo includes a freezer with vanilla and chocolate ice cream for the crew! Special treat.

SpaceX are switched on with their broadcasts too – they had multiple onboard cameras giving some amazing perspectives, such as this one of the second stage rocket glowing white hot.

This one shows the solar array deployment – unfolding surprisingly quickly.

During the broadcast, SpaceX confirmed the stories behind the naming of their craft: the Falcon 9 is named after Han Solo’s Millenium Falcon on Star Wars, and the 9 is for the nine Merlin rocket engines that power it. This screengrab shows the Falcon breaking the sound barrier.

The capsule itself is named Dragon, after the old show Puff the Magic Dragon, following criticism back in 2002 of SpaceX’s goals. This screengrab shows Dragon docked to the ISS.

Recently, SpaceX also tested their “grasshopper” configuration – a set of legs on the base of the first stage. The goal here is to retain some fuel in the booster and return the whole thing back to a gentle landing for reuse.

This shows the shock absorbers on the grasshopper legs. It was only a short hop a few metres off the ground, but it’s a start.

And what about this as a workplace?

Finally, here’s the launch control room in SpaceX HQ. NASA it is not!

The Dragon capsule looks very cylindrical there – just a wide angle lens distortion.

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What do polls and climate change have in common? It’s not what you think! Brian Schmidt at TEDx Canberra

Alan Kerlin — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 00:29:48 +0000

Here’s the talk by our own Nobel Prize winner Brian Schmidt at the recent TEDx Canberra. He talks about the certainty in uncertainty, showing how credible statistical analysis can reveal unexpected results.

You may be surprised…

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My mega grab-bag of astronomy resources for teachers, students, telescope beginners and space fans

Alan Kerlin — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 07:26:25 +0000

Whether you are a parent, teacher, student or simply an interested enthusiast, here are a number of interesting sites, podcasts, and social media people for you to draw on as you get going in amateur astronomy.

Podcasts provide an amazing resource – all free. Most are available via iTunes, the original publishers’ websites, or a raft of other podcast aggregators. There are very good apps to allow you to download podcasts to your smartphone for listening when suitable – Podcruncher is my choice for the iOS platform – brilliant app and service. Just don’t bother trying to use the Apple Podcasts app – it’s a total lemon. Good podcast apps also allow you to increase the playback speed up to double normal (Podcruncher goes in quarter increments) and surprisingly you learn to follow it. In fact, it can get so listening at normal speed is far too slow!

Many of these links also have Twitter accounts (where noted), so you can keep right up to the minute!

Astronomy podcasts:

In Australia there is the wonderful StarStuff, an independent project run by Stuart Gary but sponsored by the ABC, with the 30-minute podcasts at ABC. @abcstarstuff

Canberra’s Steve Nerlich produces Cheap Astronomy, regular 10-minute shows of varying complexity. @cheapastro

Overseas, despite a truly ugly website, the fantastic Naked Scientists from UK’s Cambridge University have a stack of brilliant podcasts on general, science, archaeology, earth sciences, oceans, Africa, great kitchen-friendly experiments, and the monthly 60-minute Naked Astronomy, steered by Ben Valsler.

Tony Darnell works in the Space Telescope Science Institute and as a hobby runs Deep Astronomy, with videos and podcasts generally about 10-minutes.

There are a stack of NASA video and audio podcasts. Of interest are the space telescope ones for Hubble, Spitzer, Chandra, plus This Week @ NASA, Universe, Earth…where to stop? You’ll be amazed at how much NASA is doing – for an agency that altogether too many people think has shut up shop!

365 Days of Astronomy is a real mixed bag of 10-minute podcasts – one for every day of the year. And it’s well worth looking back over previous episodes. Following are some specific ones worth checking out.
Teachers could start with four of the best called ‘Wonders From Class’ by Diane Turnshek from Carnegie Mellon Uni. Over four podcasts and with great passion, she describes how she engages and interests her students with the field of astronomy. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. Some others for beginning viewing and then a bit more:
Common Q&As about telescope use – from RapidEye Observatory
8 Telescope Tips for Beginners – by Telescope Man
Buying your first telescope – Telescope Man again
Have a plan – by Ed Sunder of flinstonestargazing.com
How to be an armchair astronaut – From Riding With Robots – now there’s a site to spend some time at!
Armchair astronauts exploring the solar system – by Doug Ellison ofunmannedspaceflight.com @doug_ellison
Exploring space with your computer – a guide to computer simulation tools by Bruce Irving of JPL
Moving onto photographing what you see:
Introduction to astrophotography – by Adam Pender
Webcam astrophotography – by Alexander Hobson
Amateur astrophotography for beginners – by Richard Drumm
Astroimaging under light polluted skies – by Robert Vanderbei
Expanding further – into spectroscopy:
Basic spectroscopy for amateurs and Part 2 – by Mark DeVito and Tom Field

And if you’d like to go a bit further, you can subscribe to an entire university astronomy course via podcast – all the learning but no horrible assignments or exams! Here’s one in audio format from Ohio State Uni. There are others too, including video. Check iTunes, or iTunesU, the app for which includes study notes and the ability to record your own notes as you go along.

Observing podcasts:

The Sydney Observatory posts a monthly podcast summarising the night sky viewing for the month – great for Southern Hemisphere viewers and East Coast Australians in particular. They have the added benefit of a transcript so you can print and highlight the key bits as a night sky viewing plan. @sydneyobs

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab has a short monthly video podcast, plus there’s a stack of related brain food on their site.

Observing with Webb – another USA podcast by Rod Webb, but many of the sights will be visible here, just in different locations.

Telescope Man – look for the monthly viewing summaries. No nonsense, best viewing tips, with catalogued numbers if you have a go-to scope, but based on Texas. Plenty of other good beginner podcasts too.

Non-podcast observing resources:

The Hayden Planetarium (part of the American Museum of Natural History and headed up by none other than Neil deGrasse Tyson @neiltyson) has a good monthly sky report. You can see a lot of what they discuss, but of course not all. You’ll also find their 3D atlas to the Universe.

Slooh has several large telescopes around the world and you can view the feeds for free. They have guest speakers during regular events. @slooh

Heavens Above allows you to register and enter your location, then get schedules of when key objects will pass over your patch of the sky – from GPS satellites to the International Space Station. Find out why the brightness scale goes backwards, planet and comet locations, and more.

If you just want to focus on passes of manned vehicles like the ISS or Soyuz, then check the RSS subscription for your location at NASA Human Spaceflight.

Stellarium – a free public domain computer planetarium. Free-standing once installed with no need of web access, so you can switch to red mode and take your notebook computer out with you.

Celestia – another free planetarium. This one lets you explore off-planet, and even check out various space missions.

Eyes on the Solar System – NASA’s mission tracking simulator. Go for a ride along with every NASA space mission past and present. A great way to piggy back onto the Mars Curiosity rover and relive her descent to Mars last August!

Non-podcast astronomy resources:

NASA’s Breaking News is a good resource, and has a useful RSS feed – check out Google Reader for how to collate key websites simply via RSS feeds, and Feedler Pro is a great app for viewing your Google Reader subscriptions on iThings. @NASA

NASA also has a comprehensive education section, with specialist information for teachers at different levels, students and a kids club. Too much to list and it seems to grow every time you return. It’s not all about the US either – they have an international Scientist for the Day competition running right now for school students.

It’s hard to go past Space.com for some of everything you want, and great RSS and Twitter feeds. They have a good shop too – from meteorites to kids’ spacesuits, genuine gone-to-space memorabilia to clothing. I mean, you’ve got to look the part for your classes right? @spacedotcom

With broadband, giant televisions with network sockets, and a high definition feed from NASA TV, there’s never been a better time for live viewing rocket launches, spacewalks, and more. Keep an eye on the schedule for education shows too. Be warned though, spacewalks are REALLY long and slow-mo. Some younger viewers will have a short attention span for them. But launches…Phroar! Crank up the volume.

The Square Kilometre Array is the project to build the world’s biggest radio telescope – right here in Australia. And in South Africa. It will be the biggest science project ever in our history. Good video clips explaining the project.

Bad Astronomy blogger Phil Plait sorts the facts from the nonsense. @BadAstronomer

Universe Today by Fraser Cain, who also does weekly virtual star parties with Dr Pamela Gay via Google+, YouTube and Cosmoquest. Also does the Astronomy Cast podcast.

The Space Tweep Society has great articles, photos and videos from spacefans on Twitter who travel the world to attend Tweetups – key space events like launches – and hang out with other fans who use Twitter to share their experiences with their followers. The travels to Russia are brilliantly recounted.

Registax allows you to stack multiple photos or frames from a video clip to produce a single sharp picture. Free!

Galaxy Zoo is a citizen science website that allows anyone to help the scientists categorise galaxies as seen by Hubble. There have been a number of people credited on scientific journals for the new wonders they discovered on Galaxy Zoo! And now on a spin-off you might help find exoplanets…

Tweeps you should follow:

@NASAKepler – the search for exoplanets
@SpaceflightNow – space news up to the moment, from Florida
@Nightskyonline – Australian amateur astronomer, alerts to sights
@SpaceX – the future of manned missions
@elonmusk – the boss of SpaceX – a real-life Tony Stark
@MarsRovers – updates from Opportunity on Mars
@MarsCuriosity – updates from the Mars Science Laboratory herself
@matt_heverley – lead Mars Curiosity rover driver
@marsroverdriver – Scott Maxwell, formerly driving Opportunity, now Curiosity
@spaceroboticist – Vandi Thomas – there are women driving Curiosity too
@NASAWebbTelescp – the future of space telescopes, being built now
@twisst – alerts of ISS passes over your location
@Aussie_Starman – Mark Rigby, head of the Brisbane Planetarium
@NASAJuno – Juno is heading to Jupiter
@carolynporco – the wonderful head of the Cassini mission around Saturn
@PULSEatParkes – high school students taking over The Dish at Parkes!
And all the other ones named earlier.
Apps:

Lastly, iPhone and iPad apps are simply brilliant for finding out exactly what you are looking at in the sky.
Star Walk – virtual planetarium, my favourite, $3 – worth every cent!
Distant Suns – virtual planetarium, free
SkyOrb – virtual planetarium, free
Pocket Universe – first off the line with this whole virtual planetarium approach, $2
3D Sun – know about and watch solar flares before anyone else, free
Cassini – find out what this probe is doing around Saturn, free
APOD – astronomy picture of the day – website and iPhone app, free
Exoplanet – the latest on every exoplanet discovered, free
NASA – their own app, and simple access to NASA TV – never miss another launch! Free
Mars Images – what it says on the box, free
ISS Spotter – brilliant way to make sure you don’t miss passes of the Space Station – live maps and smart alarms, free
Mission Clock – don’t miss your dose of roar, $5
Meteor Counter – help scientists monitor meteor density, free, great activity for families.

Anyway, that’s enough for now. But rest assured, it is only scratching the surface. There’s a whole world of astronomy resources out there online for you.

Cite this article:
Kerlin A (2012-10-02 07:26:25). My mega grab-bag of astronomy resources for teachers, students, telescope beginners and space fans. Australian Science. Retrieved: May 03, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/education/my-mega-grab-bag-of-astronomy-resources-for-teachers-students-telescope-beginners-and-space-fans/

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Neil Armstrong’s speech in Sydney 24 August 2011

Alan Kerlin — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 15:21:44 +0000

UPDATE: Regrettably, the CPA engaged lawyers to threaten me with everything they could think of if I didn’t pull the recording (below). So pull it I have. Please feel free to pass on any feelings about this to them. At least for the time it was available, about 500 people got to hear the great man’s words. All is not lost though. I have a contact in the US who is friends with one of the family. When the time is right, I hope she will be able to raise the issue with him. Too soon right now of course.

On 20 July 1969, my entire school in the very young city of Canberra packed into the hall to watch Neil Armstrong step onto the Moon. The school’s only television set was tiny, and my only real memories of that historic day were black and white blobs on the television screen, and teachers constantly shushing all the children.

But I did witness the event, and it is one of the earliest endures memories I have from my childhood – certainly the earliest world event I can recall. As an inspiration, the Moon landings – this first one, and all the others that followed – laid the foundation for an education in science.

On 24 August 2011, Neil Armstrong delivered a very rare and unique speech in Sydney. And it was to rekindle in me an interest in science and space exploration that had laid essentially dormant for many years.

Neil Armstrong delivering his speech in Sydney, 20 August 2011

Somewhat curiously, the event was the 125th Anniversary of the Certified Practising Accountants Australia. The CPA’s CEO Alex Malley pulled off a real coup, based on the knowledge that Armstrong’s father Steven had been an auditor.

Courtesy of my wife being a CPA, I was privileged to attend that incredible event with her. I recorded the entire speech, plus about one hour of questions and answers after that, but I was only using a cheap point-and-shoot camera, picking up the sound through the PA system. I haven’t published it beforehand though, not wanted to circumvent any speaking tours he might undertake.

However, one year and one day following that event, the man who inspired so many of us has passed away, following complications stemming from heart surgery he had a couple of weeks ago. So I feel there’s now a responsibility to get his words out there for everyone.

The speech is about 42 minutes. It doesn’t include the questions and answers – I’ll post that as soon as can get get the editing done.

CPA Australia also published an extended interview with Armstrong. The introduction to that interview contained these prophetic words:

“Rarely, if ever again, will Neil Armstrong conduct an interview such as this.”

Nor a speech like this one…

A sad sad day.

Cite this article:
Kerlin A (2012-08-26 15:21:44). Neil Armstrong's speech in Sydney 24 August 2011. Australian Science. Retrieved: May 03, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/history/neil-armstrongs-speech-in-sydney-24-august-2011/

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The whole Earth-side of the Moon should be protected forever

Alan Kerlin — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 06:57:56 +0000

Apollo 12 landing site, taken from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2011

Earlier this year, the New York Times had an interesting piece about museums seeking to protect small areas of the Moon around the Apollo landing sites. And a good thing too: “…the next generation of people visiting the moon might carelessly obliterate the site of one of humanity’s greatest accomplishments.”

More recently, NASA has released draft guidelines around protecting the landing sites from damage.

But isn’t that a bit like how Cairo almost swallows the Pyramids?

Surely we need to go further? Much further?

For thousands of years, all of Earth-bound humanity will gaze up on the Earth side of the Moon. And it’s exactly the same view looked upon by all of humanity throughout history.

Surely that whole view is worthy of protection? After all, any changes made that are visible from Earth will be visible forever. There’s no atmosphere or weather to sweep away our transgressions over time. What is done on the Moon stays done…

I raised these concerns with a NASA engineer a couple of years ago after his presentation at the Questacon national science museum about the (now ill-fated) Constellation project to return to the Moon.

It seemed to me that the American disposable society mantra was writ large in their plans, with leftover bits free to crashland wherever once done with. It’s that sort of mentality that’s got us into a spacejunk problem in Earth orbit.

I have no doubt that there will come a day – possibly while I’m still alive – that we are strip-mining parts of the Moon for minerals to build spaceships and Moonbase buildings and to fuel them.

But surely there should be a commitment from all nations for this sort of permanent scarring to be limited to the far side (the incorrectly named dark side!) of the Moon only. And for communications facilities and potentially colonies to be positioned around the Earthside perimeter for minimal visual impact, while maintaining direct communications.

There should also be strict controls on escape of artificial light. Surely the sort of light pollution that we spew pointlessly upwards from our Earth should not be shining back at us one day from the Moon?

We owe our future generations that much, I believe.

And while looking back – enjoy this handheld footage of the Earthrise, from Apollo 10, right out at the Moon, to very fitting music:

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Interview with lead Mars Curiosity rover driver Matt Heverly

Alan Kerlin — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 05:41:07 +0000

Matt Heverly during testing of rover double "Scarecrow" in the desert near Death Valley. Source: Daily Mail UK

When the Mars Science Laboratory – Curiosity – touches down on Mars today, one of the people there ready to take control of it will be Matt Heverly.

Matt is an engineer with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California and has been working on the design and build of Curiosity, as well as being one of the drivers of the lone surviving rover currently on Mars – Opportunity.

And Matt has been appointed by NASA as the lead driver for Curiosity.

Last week I interviewed Matt about this important role, about driving rovers in general, and about the science work that he’ll be helping with.

When Matt came online, he’d quite literally been in the “Mars Yard” conducting some testing with Curiosity’s twin, and he had parked it right behind himself before joining me on Skype. You can see the rover in the background.

(There are a couple of spots where the Skype signal dropped down and a warning dialogue came over the screen. I wanted to get the interview posted prior to the landing day, so no finessing the video editing…)

Interview with Matt Heverly – Mars Curiosity lead rover driver from Alan Kerlin on Vimeo.

There are actually two “twins” of Curiosity used for testing back here on Earth. The one behind Matt is an exact twin is all respects except the plutonium power supply. The other – nicknamed Scarecrow – is a slimmed down version that is designed to weigh as much as Curiosity would in the lower gravity of Mars. It is used to test driving conditions. The following video shows you Scarecrow in action in the Mars Yard:

We also talked about Athlete – a rover design originally destined for the Moon. Check this video of Athlete busting some moves:

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Where to land Mars Curiosity for the best science? Interview with Marion Anderson, who helped choose the landing site.

Alan Kerlin — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 00:31:54 +0000

Australian geologist Marion Anderson, with a model of Curiosity's predecessor rover Opportunity. Source: The Age

You’ve sunk more than $2 billion into a car-sized rover and you’re ready to send it to explore Mars. But where exactly on Mars do you send it?

Of course you want it and its controllers back here to be able to do the best possible science. So apparently that is exactly what NASA did – consulted the geology scientists of the world.

One of those scientists was Marion Anderson of Melbourne’s Monash University.

In this interview recorded on 2 August 2012, Marion explains to me what went into the selection of Gale Crater as the landing site for the Mars Curiosity rover, what to expect from the rover as it begins to explore the crater after its landing there on Monday 6 August, and why Curiosity is NOT looking for life, despite what many media people are saying (running time 20 mins).

Marion also talks about her role in selecting the landing sites for those other Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, and where next after Mars?

If you are interested in learning more about the geology of Mars, I highly recommend the one-hour lecture by Richard Pogge titled The Deserts of Mars from an entire – free – university course in Astrobiology from Ohio State University (also available on iTunes).

In the interview you’ll hear Marion talk about how Mount Sharp in the centre of Gale Crater is actually higher than the surrounding crater walls – some five kilometres high. In this lecture, listen for an explanation why Olympus Mons is the highest volcanic cone in our Solar System, and probably explaining the height of Mount Sharp too.

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