Dr. Tanya Harrison

From ESRI:

Thirty inspiring stories of diverse women using geospatial technology to advance science and help resolve important issues facing the world.

Like the first volume, Women and GIS, Volume 2: Stars of Spatial Science tells how 30 women in many different STEM fields applied themselves, overcame obstacles, and used maps, analysis, imagery, and geographic information systems (GIS) to contribute to their professions and the world. Sharing the experiences of their childhoods, the misstarts and challenges they faced, and the lessons they learned, each story is a celebration of a woman’s unique life path and of the perseverance, dedication, and hard work it takes to achieve success. This book includes multicultural women at various points in their careers such as:

• Barbara Ryan — Dedicated to open spatial data for everyone
• Cecille Blake — Growing GIS capacity in Jamaica and for North and South American countries
• Rhiannan Price — Advocating to make a difference for vulnerable populations
• Veronica Velez — Fighting for social and racial justice in education
• Tanya Harrison — Bringing Mars to the masses

From planetary scientists to civil engineers, entrepreneurs to urban planners, the strong, passionate women in Women and GIS, Volume 2: Stars of Spatial Science serve as guiding stars to motivate readers who are developing their own life stories and to inspire their potential to meaningful achievements.

The e-book of Women and GIS, Volume 2: Stars of Spatial Science, 9781589485952, $19.99, will be available at most online book retailers.

Read more: Women and GIS, Volume 2 (Book) (ESRI)

From Discover Magazine:

“After some 15 prolific years on the martian surface, NASA’s Opportunity rover has gone silent. It took a whopping planet-wide dust storm to fell the solar-powered robot, but, in February, the space agency officially ended the mission. We talked with NASA scientists about their experiences working on the golf-cart-sized rover and what Opportunity meant to them. Their eulogies for the lost rover, originally intended to last just three months on Mars, are below.”

Read more: Scientists Eulogize the Opportunity Rover’s 15 Years of Service (Discover Magazine)

From National Geographic:

Millions of miles away, a robot geologist stands alone on the dusty surface of Mars, listening for faint seismic echoes in the ground below. Its finger on the red planet’s pulse is sensitive enough to pick up the whoosh of wind, the drone of dust devils, the creak of tectonic cracks, and many other rumbles ricocheting though the planet’s insides.

While most of these signals have been indistinct murmurs, two have stood out loud and clear, allowing scientists to trace them back to their source: the first active fault zone yet found on the red planet.…

…“It’s a huge deal for Mars science,” Harrison says. “It’s totally mind blowing.”

Read more: First active fault zone found on Mars (National Geographic)

People have been talking about it for years, but we as a society are closer than we’ve ever been before – the time has come for us to pick up and move to Mars! In the Space Track we’re bringing in industry experts who will be sharing what we know so far about space, travel, and otherworldly related tech that could help us on our journey into the great beyond.

Before you start packing up your suitcases, take a look at sessions in this new track in the SXSW Conference on space-related entrepreneurship, cutting-edge technology, and more.

Read more: Let’s Move to Mars: Here’s How We’re Going to Survive in Space by Nicole Cappabianca