Not My Rovers ! 
  Sadly I must report that it appears the Mars Rovers will lose nearly 4 million dollars from its 20 million dollar budget.  Next year they are expected to take a further cut of nearly 8 millions dollars.  Worse off the funding cuts are likely to place Spirit on hibernation and job cuts […]

My last disappointment with the space centre museum was in the content. Don’t get me wrong – I was thrilled to learn about the Apollo missions, and to hear 10 minutes about the current shuttle mission. I would have loved to learn more, though. I heard a lot of “and with Orion we will go […]

I spent yesterday wandering around the Space Centre Museum at Johnson Space Centre. There were lots of things to do and see… but at the same time, it was sorely lacking.
There is one small area wherein they detailed the various incarnations of spacesuits/constant wear suits/etc. There were bios of a lot of astronauts as well. […]

Next I moved on to “Blast Off”, which was probably the best part of the whole trip, aside from the tram tour. The beginning was a little cheesy – they crammed a bunch of people into a small room with big screens and speakers, and then had us “experience” a shuttle launch. It was cute, […]

After my earlier post, I paid an obscene amount of money for a less than mediocre lunch. Then I wandered through the main exhibit halls, mostly killing time before this showing. This museum appears to be very much about (scheduled) shows (and the tour of JSC), with exhibits around to occupy you in between (but […]

As Pamela mentioned earlier, I get to spend today at the Johnson Space Centre Museum. It’s not as good as seeing the shuttle launch with Scott, but it’s a really close second – I’m sure not complaining. Talk about chances to geek out.
Pamela dropped me off here just before they opened at 10am. After paying […]

The last time I reported on Michael Griffin I was at AAS and he was addressing us (the astronomy community) on the future of astronomy missions (space missions focusing on stuff outside of our solar system). Day he will address the planetary science community (and a few stray astronomers like me) on the future of […]

This morning I’m attending an educators workshop at the Lunar and Planetary Institute on “Returning to the Moon.” At 8:45am on a Sunday I find my self in a room packed with formal educators, EPO professionals (that’s my category today), and coffee (sometimes the coffee gets high billing to). This forum has a neat multi-pronged […]

This is going to be another crazy wonderful week on Astronomy Cast Live. Just like we covered the American Astronomical Society meeting last January, this week we will be covering BOTH the launch of STS-123 and the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, TX. Making this possible are: Scott Miller (one of Pamela’s students […]

My last interview at AAS was with Dr. Stephen Unwin, the deputy project scientist for the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM). He took the time to tell me a little bit about the mission, and how the telescope will work.