Happy New Year!!

2008 will be a very exciting year for us with the MESSENGER flyby of Mercury in a couple weeks on Jan. 14 and the launch of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) on Oct. 31!

To learn more about the Mercury flyby, including how you can celebrate the event with others if you live in the DC/Baltimore area, click here.

To read the recently released LRO fact sheet, click here.

NASA CoLab

This week, I had the opportunity to meet two gentleman (one of whom I already had met in my second life - more on this in a minute) from NASA CoLab. CoLab supports on- and off-line collaboration between the various NASA Centers and between NASA and the public. To this end, they have established a presence in both real life (in San Francisco) and in Second Life.

Second Life (SL) is a 3D Multi-User Virtual Environment (MUVE) in which avatars (a virtual representation of one’s self) interact via communicating, learning, exploring, playing, and conducting business together. It currently has over 11,240,207 registered members, which it terms “residents,” from over 100 different countries.

What makes SL so attractive to its residents is that it is completely imagined and created by them. This means it is self-evolving, such that each time a resident logs in they may find that their surroundings have changed or that new places, objects, and people exist where before there were none. In addition, avatars are fully customizable, such that residents may change their basic appearance (e.g. hair color, eye color, etc.), race, gender, clothing, and even mannerisms and gestures at any time. While some residents choose to represent themselves in a manner similar to their real life (RL) self, others choose to represent themselves as animals, mythical creatures, robots, or combinations thereof.

In addition to individuals, residents of SL include many RL groups, including federal agencies (e.g. NASA and NOAA), universities, museums, planetariums, businesses, nonprofits, embassies, and the tourism departments of many countries. These groups are using SL to communicate with and educate the general public. To learn more and to download the Second Life platform, which is free, visit http://www.secondlife.com.

Ready to visit NASA CoLab in Second Life? Click here.

Live from AGU - Planetary Science!!

The annual American Geophysical Union meeting is going on this week in San Francisco, CA. The meeting pulls in thousands of scientists and educators each year, many of whom are affiliated with NASA. To learn about NASA's scientific contributions to the meeting, click here.

Talk and poster sessions cover topics ranging from volcanology to paleoclimatology to planetary science and everything in between. This year, you can check out some of the action from the meeting without having to fork over the big bucks needed to get to San Francisco. Two lectures by prominent scientists will be webcast live today! The first lecture is on Mars exlporation, which is near and dear to our hearts as you can tell from reading this blog. To view these webcasts, click here.

1440h Pacific time
The Importance of a Program of Mars Exploration
Presented by Raymond E. Arvidson, Washington University

1815h Pacific time
Abrupt Climate Change and Our Future
Presented by Lonnie Thompson, Ohio State University

Flubber Activity

The Flubber activity from yesterday's blog is available as a Google Document.

Just remember Flubber is NOT recommended for small children. The borax and glue combination is toxic.

Once you start playing with Flubber, it's hard to stop.