Planetary Radar Training
After spending 6 days in Houston, studying the microstructure of zircons at the Johnson Space Center, I now begin part 2 of my short trip to the United States. From the comfort of my airport gate at George Bush International airport, I am writing this post to update you guys about what I will be up to in Baltimore. I am travelling to Baltimore to learn planetary radar from the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Miniature-Radio Frequency (Mini-RF) science team. I was invited by Dr Gerald Patterson to travel to John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) to learn how the Mini-RF instrument collects data, and how the data is transferred to earth for processing, filtering, and map projecting. Dr Patterson is the principal investigator (PI) for the Mini-RF instrument and specializes in remote sensing analysis of the Moon and the icy satellites of Jupiter and Saturn. I will also get to meet Co-Investigators (Co-I)'s of the team throughout the week, getting lessons on how planetary volcanism, and instrument parameters.
Credit: Frances Wong - JHU
I do not have a set outline for what I will be learning throughout the week so this post is more of an update of my travels than research. If you continue to follow my website and twitter page (@GavinOnTheMoon) you will be notified about my next blog post releasing in the next couple of days (probably Monday night after I meet the team for the first time).
If you guys are liking these short blogs posts, or having any suggestions for me to improve them or add to make them a bit longer then you can leave a comment on this post.
Quick Tangent!
Quickly going off on a tangent, I have been thinking about starting a podcast. I am currently on a podcast committee called GradCast and have started editing episodes for the Institute for Earth and Space Exploration podcast Western Worlds. In the back of my mind, I have been thinking whether I should start my own because I enjoy talking to other students and professionals about their work, and developing more communication and audio editing skills. What has been holding me back from starting is picking a podcast topic. With thousands of podcasts out in the world it has become increasingly difficult to stand out. There are quite a few planetary science themed podcasts (e.g. WeMartians podcast), science communication podcasts (e.g. Ologies), and grad life podcasts (e.g. #GradLife segment on GradCast). I wanted to get your opinion on an idea I have for a podcast. Most planetary science podcasts interview professors, industry personnel, and well-established science communicators, but few focus on students, postdocs and young career professionals. I was thinking of a planetary science student themed podcast where we talk about each others research, figuring out how to stand out in planetary science careers, dealing with stress at grad school and job searching, conundrums with paper publications, and behind the scenes with students.
What do you guys think? Your opinions would be amazing as I am stuck on executing this idea :D
See you all next time!