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I Attended PlanetFest ’21: To Mars and Back Again!

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I don’t know why I’ve never attended a PlanetFest before given my interest in space exploration, but I attended my first one over the weekend. PlanetFest is an event held by The Planetary Society (TPS) to coincide with significant planetary exploration events. PlanetFest ’21 had the theme “To Mars and Back Again” to celebrate the arrival at Mars of the Perseverance Rover this Thursday, February 18; the Hope spacecraft from the UAE on February 9; and the Tianwen-1 spacecraft from China on February 10. It was a weekend of learning about space missions from experts, sharing stories, celebrating humankind’s accomplishments in space so far, and discussing what we still don’t know about Mars and the Solar System, with nods to Star Trek and other science fiction along the way. “Sailing the Light” – Premiere Watch Party Before the morning keynote, The Planetary Society premiered “Sailing the Light”, a 30-minute documentary… Continue reading

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Defending Earth from Asteroids – An Asteroid Day Post

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Bill Nye at Space Tech Expo 2013

“Asteroids Will Kill You!” That was the title of a presentation that Bill Nye, CEO of The Planetary Society (TPS) who is also known as The Science Guy, gave on the final day of the 2013 Space Tech Expo at the Long Beach Convention Center in California. Since today is the second annual Asteroid Day, which falls on the anniversary of the Tunguska Event in 1908, I thought I would share what I learned this year about the threat of asteroid impact, what efforts are being made to detect asteroids, and the ideas to defend the Earth from asteroid impact. I presented the talk below about Defending Earth from Asteroids at the AIAA Orange County (OC) Aerospace Systems and Technology (ASAT) conference. Since I don’t have audio or video for the presentation, I’ve included my notes for each slide below. Background: I gave a presentation about the problem of space… Continue reading