[X] My Assistant

[dot.dk]

http://marsrover.nasa.gov/spotlight/20051019.html

Looks like NASA has realized that they can't wear the rovers out anytime soon. And instead of the rovers wearing the science team out NASA is expanding the team

That's really good news

[RNeuhaus]

Hope that the below scientists are going to monitor this forum in order to straight out any doubts and questions from us:

The newly selected scientists are:

* Oded Aharonson; California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif.; Soil structure and stratification as indicators of aqueous transport at the Mars Exploration Rover landing sites

* Barbara Cohen; University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, N.M.; Investigating the nature and origins of Martian impact material with the Mars Exploration Rovers

* Paul Geissler; United States Geological Survey, Flagstaff, Ariz.; Investigations of Mars using the Mars Exploration Rover Athena science payload

* Amitabha Ghosh; Tharsis Inc., Gaithersburg, Md.; A study of the seasonal dependence of atmospheric conditions at the Mars Exploration Rover landing sites using the Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometer data

* Timothy McCoy; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Investigating the timing of alteration and source of volatiles on Mars

* David Mittlefehldt; NASA Johnson Spaceflight Center, Houston, Texas; Statistical analysis of Mars Exploration Rover Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer data and Columbia Hills geology

* Jeffrey Moore; NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.; Physical and geologic investigations of the surface materials along the Mars Exploration Rover traverses

* R. Aileen Yingst; University of Wisconsin Green Bay, Green Bay, Wisc.; Quantitative clast morphology as a probe to the transport history of sediments at the Mars Exploration Rover landing sites

Rodolfo

[dvandorn]

Sounds like several of these new team members will be able to stay busy for a year or two analyzing the results thus far. I'm unclear as to how many of them will be involved in day-to-day operations -- it seems it would take them some time to correlate already-gathered data and arrive at recommendations for current rover ops.

-the other Doug

[Burmese]

It's also unclear how many people have left the team to work on other stuff so we don't know if this is a net gain in the number of scientists paid to examine MER data. Overall, JPL is cutting it's workforce:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=.../space_jpl_dc_1