First UMSF Awards, Starting March 1st Options

[djellison]

Something that we've been bouncing between the admins for a while, is a means to thank and celebrate the work and creativity of science teams, engineering teams or outreachers who try to share their exploratory spirit. To that end, we are about to award the first 6 UMSF awards, to mark the 6 years of UMSF. From this year onwards, we intend to issue two awards per year, but after 6 years we've got some catching up to do so we've awarded 6 different teams or individuals in this inaugural round.

The actual awards are already in the mail out to their various recipients either directly (on pain of death if they reveal their award before we do!) , or with the help of agents of subterfuge who are holding them until the day of the actual award to keep it a surprise (you know who you are, and thankyou!)

A special thanks, as ever, to Astro0 for his typically awesome work with Photoshop to produce not only the graphics for the awards, but also for the certificates that accompany them.

The first six will be announced from March 1st to March 6th! Please don't try and play a guessing game in the mean time, you may end up causing accidental offence or disappointment.

We'll be taking nominations for the 2010 awards from UMSF members, but NOT YET... because you don't know who's won a 2009 award yet!

The first six awards will be announced at www.umsfawards.com or you can be exceptionally 21st century and keep track via @umsfawards

[djellison]

The first award has been announced. There was only one choice :

http://www.umsfawards.com/?p=34

Steve Squyres, Jim Bell & the MER Science team, for establishing the new standard for rapid release of raw imagery from spacecraft exploring the solar system with MER and Pancam.