Space Science Concentrate

After dropping Rebecca off at Johnson this morning, I decided it was time to dive into the moon. I have to admit, I am out of my field at this meeting. I suspect the majority of the people around me come from geology and planetary science departments instead of physics and astronomy departments. They have their own culture, and the words and acronyms they fall into aren’t the ones I’m used to from AAS meetings. They are a welcoming bunch however, and I’m really enjoying all that I’m learning. This is definitely a much needed crash course in planetary science.

Put simply, this is Space Science Concentrate, with 15-minute talk after 15-minute talk diving deeply into the newest results from across the planetary science field. There are four parallel sessions at a time going on, with capacity for a couple hundred people at each presentation. People are loaded into sessions (with an empty chair between each of them), sitting attentively taking in the science. The are generally young, and the average hair color is brown (biased to dark brown by all the Japanese over from JAXA and NAOJ). Walking around I hear German, Japanese, and languages I can’t identify. There are packs of students of all ages – I’ve identified at least two high school students and saw one young women wearing a Space Academy lanyard with several Space Academy pins (I have the same at home – I want to talk to her and her story). I like this meeting, barring the terrible chairs. I just wish I understood more of the richness – I don’t always know why results are uber cool, but I’m meeting people I want to get to know so they can tell me. There was one talk on lunar dust earlier today (will come up in my next post) that was really cool (words I never thought I’d say about dust) and I want to see if I can talk to the speaker on audio or video recorder. I’ll bring you what I can.

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