The park also has wonderful examples of glacial geology. HiRISE has taken images of many features thought to be related to glaciers, so it’s important to understand the terrestrial analogs that lead scientists to think these are evidence of flowing ice on Mars. For example, we hiked along a moraine composed of jumbled rocks the Grinnell Glacier left behind as it flowed downhill. In addition to the remains of the (rapidly disappearing) glacier itself, we also saw typical glacial erosional structures such as U-shaped valleys, hanging valleys, and cirques. For a HiRISE image of cirque-like features, see PSP_005730_1405.

On one of our field trips, we were accompanied by reporter Michael Jamison of The Missoulian. This story was on the front page of the paper the following day:

I thought the story was really good – a quirky (but so are we!) description of why we would want to stare at the rocks in such a magnificent setting, and their relevance to our mission to Mars. We all thought it was funny when he called Alfred McEwen, our Principle Investigator, a “Marsman”!

HiRISE Team in Glacier National Park, in front of a classic U-shaped valley carved by glacial erosion.

Today during the meeting we are getting updates on all the Science Themes. Our images are divided into groups according to the geologic process that we hypothesize occurred. For each of these themes, a Science Theme Lead is assigned. These “STLs” are Co-Investigators or postdocs who are experts in that area. For example, the Volcanic Processes theme contains images intended to explore phenomena related to volcanism, such as inflated lavas, water-lava interactions, volcanic pits and cones, and mysterious types of collapse features such as the one shown in the anaglyph to the left. As you can read in the caption for that image, we’re still not sure how this feature formed. There are several different possibilities. The image was originally placed in the Impact Processes theme because that was one hypothesis. However, after seeing the high resolution image and stereo data from HiRISE, formation by a meteor impact doesn’t seem as plausible. Collapse after loss of material beneath the surface, such as magma or water, is a better fit to our observations.

As usual, other blogs are covering the meeting well (Planetary Society and the Martian Chronicles, for example). In addition, the sessions are all being web-streamed live (links to streaming video here; full program here). I think this afternoon’s special sessions are going to be really interesting, so I recommend watching them. I’m especially interested in the mission highlights from the rovers, Phoenix, MESSENGER, Cassini, and Kaguya. We’ve already seen some results from Kaguya and MESSENGER in the individual sessions – exciting stuff!

The Martian Chronicles has two great articles about presentations given by HiRISE Team Members: Spiders on Mars, from our Deputy PI Candice Hansen (more about this topic here, under “Spring at the South Pole of Mars”); and Layers and Swiss Cheese, which mentions two HiRISE people, Kathryn Fishbaugh and Shane Byrne. The polar group has been very active in helping to plan and target images, and their results are really cool (ha, ha!).

Star Stryder has also been at LPSC, with lots of stories through the week. The post Pingos, Polygons and other Puzzles mentions two types of Martian landforms I know members of our team are studying in HiRISE images, although there aren’t many specifics about their LPSC presentations. For some visuals to go along with the story, here are some HiRISE images of possible pingos and plentiful polygons.

I also thought their reports on speeches by the NASA bigwigs were very interesting: NASA Administrator Mike Griffin telling young scientists not to specialize in the face of changing funding priorities, and Alan Stern discussing possible MSL delays.

So, check out these reports, and if you see any other good ones, add a link below in the comments! Hopefully we’ll get more as the week progresses.

Well, soon I will be in Italy for the MRO PSG in Rome and then for the Terrestrial Analogues meeting in Trento. After these two meetings, I will be taking three days off to go down to Sicily for a long overdue break. My parents await me in Gratteri, and it will be so nice to meet them there for my second visit. I am particularly excited as I will be bringing a HiRISE image of the Martian Gratteri crater to present to the Mayor and townsfolk. In addition to a poster print out of the HiRISE image taken during our first cycle, I will be bringing an annotated version that I made and would like to share with you here. I used Google Earth to find Gratteri and acquired the satellite image along with the proper scale so that I could superimpose it on the HiRISE image. Gratteri is the cluster of buildings on the right with the cutout being approximately 2.5 km in width. The Martian crater Gratteri is almost 7 km in diameter. I was once again reminded, and immediately humbled, by the shear scale of this crater that I claim to know so much about! I’m amazed how big this rather small Martian crater is in relation to our terrestrial stomping grounds.

Well, I best be off. I still have so much packing to do! Not to mention, I haven’t even finished my talk yet…

Ciao miei Amici! Ci vediamo dopo!

Also, our team is really growing!

You’ll notice a lot of new faces compared to a few years ago!

We spent the first day updating the team on our operations here at HiROC. Then for two days, almost everyone on the science team presented new results from recent HiRISE data, and explained their plans for future observing and analysis. We saw some really great images! A lot of people are doing “quick & dirty” three-dimensional analgyphs with our stereo data (like these), so we got to wear our red/blue glasses a lot. (We don’t have things calibrated & automated to the point where we can do this “correctly” yet, so these are still mostly preliminary, hand-processed products.)

Today, most of the team is participating in software training. Since we only have a day, we’re just doing short demos of the planning tools (HiPlan – see previous HiBlog entry for a recent update) and some of the analysis tools (like ISIS and IDL/ENVI)

For operations, it’s been wonderful to see the fruits of our efforts — we go to a lot of trouble to acquire an image, but once it’s acquired, we tend to lose track of it, because we’re planning the next images! Seeing the science that comes out of the data not only helps us understand strategies and be more intelligent in our targeting and planning, it’s also just really cool! I think keeping the “big picture” in mind is important in keeping us motivated and excited about what we’re doing.

For those interested, let me give you an idea what we are up to. The targeting specialists are starting to find the next places we’ll image. We are getting ready to start our regular imaging meetings, which will take place biweekly, to discuss the locations to image during the upcoming weeks.

HiOPS, the Operations team, is reviewing the operation of the camera, still verifying that everything was taken correctly. So far HiRISE appears to have operated nearly perfectly.

HiTECH, the technical support team, is making some adjustments to our software, tweaking it so as to make sure everything is running perfectly.

HiEST, the engineering team, is analyzing the telemetry of the pictures, and making sure everything ran as expected. Their report was that the instrument is in perfect condition.

Everyone is still looking at the images we have already taken, and the HiRISE internal email is full of cool segments of pictures, and commentary about these pictures. Everyone is very excited for the next batch we will receive!

So, we are all getting ready for Primary Science Phase. It’s amazing to think we’ll be able to get these high-quality pictures for such a long period of time! We are all just waiting to see what will happen. All that we really know is, we will learn many new and exciting things about the Red Planet, more than we have ever known before. And we can’t wait to do so!

This morning, however, we got a break and didn’t have to call in until 9 AM (finally, I got to sleep in! ). When I dialed in, I thought I had called the wrong number! Everyone on the phone was laughing and joking around — very unlike any other tagup meeting I’ve attended. People were very happy and excited to finally see the data from all the instruments. Everyone has been working so hard, and this is the ultimate reward.

The teams all agreed that everything is going well. Congratulations were shared all around!

All of us at HiRISE are grateful for all the hard work the spacecraft teams have done to get us to Mars. We couldn’t do it without them!