Who I Am

I am a planetary geologist and I have two main jobs--I do Mars research and I direct an outreach program that shares the excitement of Mars exploration with kids, teachers and communities throughout Arizona and across the world. I am also the editor of a quarterly newsletter, Mars Underground News for The Planetary Society, and another one, TES News for the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) project.

Besides all of that, I have many other projects underway--I have coauthored a children's book about Mars that will be published in 1999 (my coauthor is Peggy Wethered, a kindergarten teacher in Idaho), I write lots of articles about Mars exploration, and I am working on some television projects.

What I Do

I work at Arizona State University in the same facility that controls the MGS TES instrument. For the TES project, I am working with a combination of old Mars data and the new data to develop a good understanding of the geology of specific regions on the planet. I also support the TES effort by doing the outreach program.

My boss, Phil Christensen and I started the Arizona Mars K-12 Education Outreach Program in 1992 as a way to share the excitement of the Mars Observer project. The outreach program grew and grew. In 1992, I was still a graduate student.

I do not have a typical work day. Each day is vastly different. I travel and write a lot. The education outreach program conducts teacher workshops, tours for kids that visit our lab and much more. I sometimes go to schools and talk about the Mars missions and sometimes I get to be on radio and TV to talk about these things.