Thanks Frances for everything!!! 🥹🎉🎉

Seasonally Dependent Formation of Sulfates in the Basque Lakes, British Columbia, as Analogous to “Cold and Wet” and “Warm and Wet” Mars The Basque Lakes in British Columbia, Canada, are an analog for both “cold and wet” and “warm and wet” Mg-sulfate lakes on Mars Mineralogy varies based on season with hydrated sulfates forming in...

Early holiday treat 🎁 New paper led by PLANETAS member Emmy Hughes @spacelover20.bsky.social on salt seasonality in hypersaline lakes in Canada showing how cold forming Na sulfates could be climate indicators if found in martian paleolake sediments! ❄️

agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

Worth popping in to mention our paper on seasonal sulfate mineralogy in British Columbia, Canada, with relevance to Gale, Jezero and wider Mars ancient saline lakes, has been published! doi.org/10.1029/2025...

A reddish rock face with fractures filled with a white mineral. Scratch marks and a little circular pit are created by the spinning DRT brush. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill

Closeup MAHLI inspection of mineral-filled rock fractures. Area pre-cleared of dust with the DRT brush. Taken by the Mars Curiosity Rover on Sol 4559.

flic.kr/p/2r8V21b

On the super random things you learn at LPSC...apparently some of my Mars research is an SAT prep question 🤓😆

Wonderful LPSC this year + NASA/ASU scope workshop on communicating planetary science! Left with so many ideas and new friends/colleagues! It was a true honor to attend, along with so many amazing women from my lab group who inspire me to try to do my best work every day 💛

Spent a beautiful week up at the Basque Lakes, where I've had the privilege to study some really cool hypersaline lakes for the past several years. Always a joy to get up here, with some awesome people. #saltygoodness #astrobiology

Today, sixty days after being laid off by JPL, my severance pay and insurance coverage expire.

At JPL, I did engineering ops for the Curiosity Rover 🚀. Before that, I studied entrepreneurship and management at Stanford.

Please reskeet this so I can make new connections and find new opportunities 🤠

Satellite imagery captured by MAXAR showing the extent of the Eaton Fire in North Pasadena and Altadena.

Folks, a huge number of people at JPL have been affected by the LA wildfires, with many losing their homes.

If you can, consider contributing to a fund that's been set up to help them:

(Link looks sketch but site is legit)

caltech.imodules.com/controls/ema...

NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab closed due to raging LA fires "No fire damage so far (some wind damage) but it is very close to the lab. Hundreds of JPLers have been evacuated from their homes & many have lost homes."

The fires in LA are having a big impact on the #NASA community. I'm starting to hear that several colleagues at #JPL have lost their homes. I'm so sorry for what you are going through and I hope that you and your families (including pets) are able to stay safe. 🔭🪐🧪
www.space.com/space-explor...

I upgraded my #LPSCHaiku to an LPSC tanka this year.

Abstract 2663: In ancient rock slide: // Sulfur, in element form // encases rubble // and spreading atoms yonder, // clothes rocks in myriad forms.

That’s lovely. Incredibly funny song—love hearing the audience laughing along as well!

So good. The entire album. Small Revelations is also especially “stop you in your tracks” good, I think

Erika Rader (left) and Elena Amador (right) use handheld portable chemical analysis instrumentation analogous to those used on Mars, but in Dyngjusandur, a basaltic tephra plain in Iceland.

A magnesium-sulfate crystal that forms in a hypersaline, or extremely salty, lake.

EAS Ph.D. student Lea Adepoju holds sediments from a sediment containing methan-hydrate beneath the seafloor near Oregon. Ocean science and engineering Ph.D. student Claire Elbon (center) and PI Jennifer Glass look on. Photo by Rob Felt.

Georgia Tech students Tatiana Gibson (left) and Alivia Eng (center) collaborate with Marion Nachon (right) from Texas A&M. Photo by Courtney Flatt/Northwest Public Broadcasting.

How can we learn more about space without having to go there? Georgia Tech researchers like @methanojen.bsky.social, @spacelover20.bsky.social, and @francypants.bsky.social use extreme Earth environments as analogs for Mars, Jupiter's moon, and more. 🪐 b.gatech.edu/3VxkjY4

Welcome to the "Altadena Quad" Curiosity!

Over the weekend, the Curiosity team snapped the view below & started a new theme for informal target names that will recognize the geology and rich human history around Altadena, a town in JPL's backyard. Wohoo! science.nasa.gov/blog/sols-43...

New article on Georgia Tech planetary science analogue research is up!! Featuring the range of GT labs doing research in extreme earth environments (including my own field site in Canada!) to study other planets/moons! Check it out :)

research.gatech.edu/feature/very...

Me! Mostly BIAB IPAs, ambers, stouts and other ales! I think there are more than a few geologist homebrewers out there…

Mount Eerie – Night Palace | Album Review — Swim Into The Sound It’s been about a month since Night Palace dropped, and I barely have my arms around it. Over the course of 81 minutes, legendary singer-songwriter Phil Elverum covers a lot of sonic and thema...

I got a chance to review one of all-time my favorite artists over at @swimintosound.bsky.social this week :)

swimintothesound.com/blog/2024/11...

Angled rocks jutting out from sand

Rocks imaged by the Mars Perseverance Rover on Sol 1336.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/Kevin M. Gill

A rock with a patch of polygonal lines. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill

Polygonal features on a rock as seen by the Mars Curiosity Rover this week on Sol 4368.

Atlanta Skyline! (Yes I know the buildings are all out of order lol)

This new taxon is macroscopic, motile, and bilaterally symmetrical, yet it consistently demonstrates an asymmetric “question mark” shape in all specimens, demonstrating the oldest example of metazoan-grade chirality!