of Wyoming. He will be flying on a helicopter from McMurdo to the Dry
Valleys to study gullies. He wants to see if there are analogy
between the gullies there and those on Mars. He will be staying at
camp set up by the NSF (National Science Foundation who also runs
McMurdo and South Pole Station) which apparently has also satellite
connections. He will scan the gullies using a really fancy laser
setup. The laser scans the gully over a distance of over half-a-
mile. The reflected light from the dirt, snow, and several mirrors is
recorded on a sensor, and from this, he can map out the floor of
entire valleys. How cool is that!
He has also flown on a zero-gravity airplane, better known as vomit
comet. These airplanes will go up and down on arcs, and when they
reach the top of the arc, you get some 10 seconds of weightlessness.
He was studying how sediments, or mud settles or doesn't settle with
no gravity. They carry scientific experiments, and there are
competitions for high school and college students where you can submit
experiments to do on one of these.
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