For the past two months, I’ve been writing for the Space subsite on io9. If you haven’t checked it out before, here’s some stories stories from this week that you might find interesting:
- I get concerned about too many landslide stories in one day, and teach you how to not die in a landslide. Because seriously, don’t die in a landslide. It would make me sad.
- Salt ponds on Earth are pretty no matter where they are.
- Stories from the Stargate science consultant (that’s me!): real atmospheric science lurking in Stargate: Atlantis “Brain Storm.”
- Jupiter’s moon Ganymede may have layers of ice and water within its ocean, making it a more interesting world with a better chance of producing alien critters.
- Russia snarked at NASA to go full-out on their sanctions and get to space via trampoline, to the amusement of physicists.
- A National Parks photography contest leaves me dreaming of a road-trip vacation to the beautiful geological landscapes, and more than slightly awed at how cheap it is to visit.
- Sand dunes on Mars are totally Star Trek communicator badges.
- NASA picked a winning entry for the fashionable skin of its prototype Z2 space suit; opinions are highly mixed on whether or not this was a good thing.
- Successful test flights everywhere! SpaceX had a semi-successful soft-landing during their ISS resupply run, then a fully successful soft-landing test for their new F9R rocket. Meanwhile, the prototype planetary explorer Morpheus had a successful test-flight using its hazard detection system to pick a soft landing spot.
- Manned spaceflight history! How Snoopy became the mascot for safety, a new skin to the 2048 game featuring moonwalkers, and a bit of love for the world’s only moon-golfer, Alan Shepard.
- A new study on the impact of long-term exposure to radiation in space is bad news for Fantastic Four fans. This continues on my radiation-obsession from last week, looking at the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
- Curiosity produced some self-portraits, sparking a look at how those portraits are made, and how dusty Mars coats the pretty rover in a layer of grime.
- Not new stories, but updates to the story of the missing girls in Nigeria.
I also have a massive In Case You Missed It post covering the Space subsite for April, just in case you want to spiral down a recursive network of link-clicking. But really, I wrote some cool things last month that you might find awesome if this is the first you’ve heard of me writing for io9.
This is the last month of my trial period as an io9 Recruit. If I don’t make 300k US People in traffic for the month of May, I will no longer be writing on the io9 website. If that fills you with a gasp of denial, spread the love by sharing a story you liked on Facebook, Twitter, or whatever social media platform you desire to help me reach new readers.