The second really interesting talk in the session on comparative planetology (that I wrote about here, and Pamela wrote about here) was about how plate tectonics  effects the “habitability” of a planet.
Plate Tectonics or Not: Lithospheric Stress on Terrestrial Planets and Super-Earths (O’Neill C.J., Lenardic A., Jellinek A.M.)
This presenter started by pointing out that plate […]

Friday morning Pamela and I both went to the session on comparative planetology. While we’d worked pretty hard to make sure we were never both in the same session, this was sort of necessary. We had to leave mid-session in order to get to the airport in time for my 2.15 flight home – so […]

Let the rovers roll! The European Space Agency has announced its first Aurora Program mission, and it’s called ExoMars. The goal is to search for evidence of past and present life in samples from the top 2 meters of Martian surface. This is a rover that carries around a laboratory platform. In looking for Extant […]

Two selected talks presented. I’m also going to float to other sessions.

Craters Craters Craters – C. Chapman presenting
Craters. Double-ringed craters. Craters with lumps in the middle. Craters with smooth basins in the middle. Craters overlapping craters.
Mercury is, put simply, littered with craters.
The come in chains. They come in clusters. They come in different periods of […]

I’m spending my morning in a session on Mercury and Messenger’s new results. There is no WiFi in here, so this is all getting posted in one large, time-delayed, lump. There are also no websites being noted so press can go get images, so this is going to be less visual then I would have […]

I sat in on a large portion of this session about topographical features on Mars, and I have now moved outside to write my thoughts on it at a table by the pool. It’s a little odd to this Canadian to be able to comfortably sit outside in the Sun on only the 10th of […]

Hi all, this is Emily Lakdawalla from the Planetary Society Weblog. Pamela asked me to post my reports from LPSC to Astronomy Cast, so here I am!
This is just a brief post from Houston to say I’m here and covering what I can from the first day of the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. I’ve […]

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.

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When I worked on Hubble data, lo these many years ago, some of the most fun […]

As space telescopes get larger and more sensitive, the search for Earth-sized worlds surrounding other stars is about to get rolling. But astronomers are going to need to know where to look. A team of researchers are working on a survey of nearby stars, calculating the habitable zones around them. When the search begins, astronomers […]