What was it like studying Mars after working with Earth rocks?
It’s been an interesting transition coming from a terrestrial background where I’m used to being able to handle rocks and walk around the field. Now I’m in a field where it’s a mission, so there’s a lot of people involved. There’s engineers, there’s planetary geologists, there’s meteorists, there’s people who develop the instruments. … So I went from a situation where I was a single researcher and then became part of this bigger thing. But I bring to it a different perspective because I had the terrestrial background. Do you have to vie for attention? Yeah, we do actually. Let’s say the rover is driving someplace and I see a rock that I think is really interesting. In order for that rover to actually go over and examine that rock, I have to come up with a workable plan for that to occur. And not only do I have to come up with a workable plan, I have to come up with a hypothesis for why we would study it. For example, the Spirit rover has been in a place called Home Plate for almost thr
