Book Series
I’m thrilled to announce that Generation Mars has an illustrator! Luis Peres, master illustrator of science fiction and fantasy, will bring his vivid style to Book One: Scratching the Surface. The image above is from his existing portfolio and serves as an example of his work. The actual illustrations are currently under development. You can see more of his work by clicking the link below, and I encourage you to take a look. It’s wonderful stuff!
Mars is a dusty place. Researchers now think much of this dust comes from a single feature on the surface. Overview below. Original article here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05291-5
Want to build your own rover? NASA/JPL will show you how. This could be a very fun project, if you happen to have $2500 available.
Build-It-Yourself Rover
I really like this picture. Not only does it show surprising detail despite the dust storm, but look at those moons!
The Eagle landed 49 years ago today, and two humans walked on a celestial body for the first time.
I have a fleeting, four-year-old’s memory of my dad waking me up (I must have been napping, as we were in CDT) to watch the moon landing. I don’t remember anything about the landing itself, just my dad waking me to see it. But that’s special enough, I think.
Here’s a nifty 360 of the interior of the Command Module that carried Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins to the moon that day.
https://www.facebook.com/Smithsonian/photos/a.57737704573.63791.6193904573/10156728357319574/?type=3&theater
Lest it seem Generation Mars is mired in nostalgia, with all the recent Apollo posts, here’s Blue Origin pushing to new heights earlier today.
This article is actually a couple years old. But if you haven’t seen it, it’s a fun read.
Keep in mind that this software was literally woven into the Apollo Guidance Computer’s (ACG’s) memory by hand. Wire by wire, the 0’s and 1’s were stitched together to get us to the Moon.
Programmers, at least the ones I like to hang out with, have always had a sense of humor in the commenting of their code. It’s nice to see the programming team for Apollo was no exception.
49 years ago today, Apollo 11 lifted off. It’s been too long.
NASA 
CNN 
Quartz 