NASA UPDATE

It's the end of the fifth week at NASA. Let's have a recap:

Week One
Geronimo was in Chile, so I "read." Not even assigned reading. It was "read about this topic. Bye."

Week Two
Geronimo was back but I didn't see him until halfway through the week. I "read" more. Then he sat down with me and introduced me to a procedure called 'examinefits' in IDL and told me a little bit about the data I would be working with. Then I began organizing data into systematic folders and recording information from the data in spreadsheets.

Week Three
I continued organizing data and read about spectroscopy. Geronimo also had me figure out the probability of finding a molecule of methane at a certain energy level in an atmosphere. I made it a lot more difficult than it was and this reassured G that I was (am) an idiot.

Week Four
Geronimo wanted me to read through his 3000-line code to 'know what it was actually doing and not just black-box it.' He told me to read through the code and document the keywords. After two days of doing this, and getting about 2/3 of the way through the code, and after I had already sent him the beginnings of my document which he said looked good, we met and he said he didn't actually know what I was doing. He showed me what he really meant and a much better way of doing things... it would have been nice if he started me out with that information, but hey, you know.

After I finished the document (18 pages), Geronimo went through it with me and clarified things that were secret keywords or just explained the process. Then I finally began actually doing something. The program was called IBATCH and it served to crop, clean and align the raw data (spatially and spectrally). I began going through the program for the five different settings (wavelength ranges) we were using.

G and I really started bonding during this week.

Week Five
I finished running through IBATCH for the five settings. Now that I was familiar with each of the settings, we could begin using the Automator to run through the data sets. I prepped the data for the Automator by figuring out the cropping parameters for each setting for each night of data. Now I am running the Automator through a different, much faster computer. But I still have to watch the Automator to make sure it doesn't screw up (read: I screwed up by entering the wrong numbers).

Next up: Learning IPLANET. This is another program that Geronimo wrote (I think...) and it removes the Earth's atmospheric data from the data to leave us with only Mars data. It is much more complicated, but from the way G had me document IBATCH, that document should be very helpful in terms of knowing what to input.

 My computer screen. With another computer screen in it.

YEAH PLOTS!
BORRRRRRINNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

Right?

Well, I'm gonna let you in on a little secret that NASA doesn't want you to know about. Let me just assert that this is only the beginning (more posts to follow).

Let me give you a little backstory first.

NASA first began watching me when I wrote a poem in fourth grade. I wrote the following poem, which I still have memorized (and my brother still has memorized for some weird reason... or not weird at all, maybe???). I was one of a limited number of students from the entire school district (about 5 elementary schools I think) who was picked to recite their poem at the Strasenburgh Planetarium in Rochester. I was honored to be chosen, but I had a sneaking suspicion that the government was watching me, and may even have "worked things" so that I was definitely chosen. This is even worse staging than ___ _____, which I refuse to admit that I am watching right now. 

Anyway, here's the poem:

Aliens?
Other life?
Is there more?
Should we find out?
Are you sure?
Size?
Big, small?
Round or tall?
Different?
Why, maybe...
Watching us...?
Well...
How many?
Thousands, millions?
I don't know.
Let's find out.
Should we?
No...
Color?
Yellow, green,
Purple or blue?
Do we have a clue?

How could NASA not put me on their 'watch list' after something like that?

My thoughts exactly.

Well, after that poem, I was on NASA's radar and that's where I have stayed ever since. And now I have played into their massive government satellite-y hands.

Now we get to the good stuff, the real stuff I've been doing here at NASA the past five weeks.

Take everything you know about aliens from the movies Alien, Independence Day, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Mars Attacks!... It's all true.


Basically, I'm not looking at spectra of Mars for biosignatures. I am signaturizing the bio of Mars.

For example, this is Frank:

I was logging the number of teeth he has in each mouth when I made a joke about his mom (a joke!) and he got all mad and we had to call a Code 437. That was a long day. We had to shut down the Goddard campus and eventually we calmed him down by reading his favorite book to him (Everybody Poops - they don't have such bodily inefficiencies in the Martian underground, even with all those mouths).

But don't be worried that aliens exist and so close to us. Frank's a great guy, you just have to get to know him (note: he's sensitive about his mom).

And you shouldn't be worried about NASA's plans either. With the new 3D hype in the movies, NASA is really just planning on making the awesomest alien encounter movie EVER (ever ever ever ever).

Here is the promo billboard for the movie (starring Frank!):