Dr. Tanya Harrison
How next-gen satellites are transforming our view of climate change (CNET)
As more frequent and more severe storms erode coastlines, mapmakers must adapt quickly.
For anyone living in areas less directly affected by the climate crisis, maps that show change over time provide a crucial bridge to understanding what’s really happening in other places, and how quickly.
“By helping people visualize how the world is changing, maybe that will give them a better understanding of climate change as a whole,” says Tanya Harrison, director of science strategy at Planet, a private satellite imagery company. “How is your neighborhood being affected? How is your grandmother’s house being affected? Maybe she lives on the other side of the country or the other side of the world. In a way, that can kind of make this a little bit more personal.”
See more: How next-gen satellites are transforming our view of climate change by Megan Wollerton
10 Amazing Things Humans Did in Space in 2021 (Medium)
While this year may have sucked pretty hard on Earth, some pretty cool stuff happened in (and/or near) space in 2021. And while robots and rockets tend to steal the show, all of those bits of technology were designed, built, and operated by humans! Let’s look back at the past year.
See more: 10 Amazing Things Humans Did in Space in 2021 by Tanya Harrison
Dr. Tanya Harrison Discusses the JWST Launch (Al Jazeera)
It’s Time to Reclaim the Narrative Around Space from the Billionaires (Medium)
With the “billionaire space race” taking center stage in the media over the past few months, we’ve lost sight of why so many people are passionate about space.
This morning, Jeff Bezos’ rocket company Blue Origin launched four people into space, including Star Trek’s own Captain Kirk, William Shatner*. While this flight only lasted mere minutes, the impact on Shatner was abundantly clear as soon as he stepped out of the New Shepard crew capsule after touchdown. Bezos walked up to Shatner and asked how the experience was, to which he replied, “In a way, it’s indescribable.” And as he starts to try to articulate what was most unexpected to him…
…Bezos turns away, interrupting him to pop a bottle of champagne and cheer.
See more: It’s Time to Reclaim the Narrative Around Space from the Billionaires by Tanya Harrison
Understanding Planets by Imaging from Space (The Museum of Flight)
The History of “Why Mars?” (Explore Mars)
SpaceX launch: Four citizen astronauts blast off on three-day journey, and will orbit Earth every 90 minutes (SkyNews)
The first all-civilian crew ever to orbit the Earth have blasted off on their historic mission.
The Dragon capsule containing the four citizen astronauts was launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.
One of those aboard the mission, billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, paid an undisclosed fee to SpaceX for the chance to fly with three others.
During its three-day journey the capsule will orbit the earth once every 90 minutes at a speed of more than 17,000mph and an altitude of 360 miles – even higher than the orbiting International Space Station and Hubble Space Telescope.
See more: SpaceX launch: Four citizen astronauts blast off on three-day journey, and will orbit Earth every 90 minutes by Greg Milam
New Curiosity Rover Find Challenges a Fundamental Mars Theory (Inverse)
FOR MORE THAN NINE YEARS, A CAR-SIZED ROBOT has been roaming the Martian landscape in search of ancient life.
NASA’s Curiosity rover landed on Gale Crater on August 6, 2012, and has been exploring the presumably dried-lake ever since. But a fresh look at Curiosity’s old data revealed that the ancient basin may not have been as wet as scientists once believed, possibly altering the history of water on Mars and the probability of the Red Planet hosting life during its past…
Tanya Harrison, a planetary scientist and director of science strategy for Planet Labs, who was not involved in the study, says that the reason Gale Crater was designated as the Curiosity rover’s destination is that Mount Sharp appeared to straddle that boundary between warm, hot Mars and cold, dry Mars.
“The crater was probably filled with water — that water evaporated and left the bottom half of Mount Sharp behind, which eventually eroded to the point that it’s at today,” Harrison tells Inverse. “At some point later, these wind-blown deposits were laid on top of that. Because the top half of Mount Sharp is not carved by any channels or anything that we can see, that suggests that it never interacted with water.”
See more: New Curiosity Rover Find Challenges a Fundamental Mars Theory by Passant Rabie
9 Big Discoveries by Curiosity for its 9th Landiversary (Medium)
Nervous Mars scientists around the world watched with bated breath as the behemoth Curiosity rover began its descent toward the surface of the Red Planet, known as the “Seven Minutes of Terror.”
We’d never sent something this size to land on Mars. We’d never used anything like the Skycrane to land on another world.
This was an audacious mission, and we all knew it.
Thankfully for all of us—and probably for the continued future of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program in general—the Skycrane system worked flawlessly, and Curiosity touched down at its permanent home in Gale Crater on August 5, 2012.
Gale Crater was chosen as the landing site for the rover based on satellite data suggesting the crater may have contained a lake around 3.5 billion years ago. While the water is long gone, its disappearance left behind a plethora of clays, sulfates, and other sedimentary rocks, all containing clues as to the martian environment when the lake was in existence. Curiosity’s mission goal was to look for signs of “habitability”—key things life as we know it would need to survive. Nine [Earth] years into its mission, it has revealed many important insights into the history of Mars. In celebration of its ninth landiversary, here are nine key discoveries from the rover so far:
See more: 9 Big Discoveries by Curiosity for its 9th Landiversary by Tanya Harrison
Surviving Grad School: 3 Tips Before You Even Apply (Medium)
Graduate school is hard. Not going to sugar coat that. But it can also be a truly amazing and unique time in your life, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be miserable on top of being difficult. Here are some things you can do and think about before you even start applying to Ph.D. programs* that can help make the experience better—and hopefully something that makes you grow as a person and as a researcher:
*And if you’re on the fence about whether getting a Ph.D. is right for you in the first place, check out this other article.
See more: Surviving Grad School: 3 Tips Before You Even Apply by Tanya Harrison