In addition the excellent voice work of Arizona Public Media radio personality Robert Rappaport, we’re very excited to announce our newest voice, Tre Gibbs.

Mr. Gibbs is a professional voice over talent based out of California. He saw our earlier call for new voices, volunteered and more than met the challenge. This week’s captions are his first for HiRISE and we’re very glad and appreciative of his efforts. You can view his website here.

We also have a new Spanish voice over, La costa de las estrellas. ¡Gracias para el apoyo!

Of course, we are always looking for new voices so we can replace our computer-generated audio with some down-to-Earth humans. The more audio we have, the bigger the audience for those who are visually impaired. Contact hitranslate at uahirise dot org for more info.

We also thank our volunteers who have made recordings for us throughout: Nahum, Murilo, Ari, Roberto, and Ana Margarida.

And welcome to our team, Tre, Fernando Beltran and Estrella Castello!

When we do public presentations, one point we like to mention is how much technology has changed in the exploration of Mars. Our favorite example is the (in)famous feature in the Cydonia region, snapped by Viking in the 1970s and known to the world as “the Face.”

HiRISE has imaged this landform as well, and at much better resolution. But even now, with MRO’s electronics, it sometimes seems an iPhone is more powerful and sophisticated with what it can do! Planetary probes have technological obsolescence built in, but unlike a phone or a computer, you can’t (really) upgrade anything. It’s amazing so many of our probes have lasted as long as they have. (Voyagers, we’re looking at you!)

But what got us writing this post was having stumbled across an old “In Search Of…” episode about Mars. It’s worth a look (you can tell your boss it’s research. We did!) to see how much things have or haven’t changed in thinking about the Red Planet: http://youtu.be/gdMILD8XUoQ

We thought we would drop this blog entry about the latest Lunar and Planetary Science Conference for your reading pleasure with some ideas about the past Martian climate.

When giving public presentations, we often mention areas of Mars, like Nili Fossae where we have detected phyllosilicates, which is a $50 word for clay minerals, broadly speaking. Because we keep our presentations general, we often say, these places are where we want to send rovers to see if water was once there, as part of NASA’s grand “follow the water” theme.

But, what if these clays aren’t present here because of the presence of a body of water but perhaps under the surface where water could exist in liquid form? And if we say that Mars was wetter in the ancient past, does that necessarily mean it was warmer?

Check out the link above for some of the latest research ideas.

We at HiRISE extend our condolences to one of our HiTranslate volunteers, Aristides Skourtopoulos, whose father passed away unexpectedly.

While we respect Ari’s privacy during a difficult time, we are very proud of his help in just about single-handedly getting the Greek section of HiRISE underway. We’ve been fortunate to have such a terrific group of volunteers that they all really seem part of the HiRISE team.

Thank you, Ari! Your friends at HiRISE wish you and your family well.

We’ve been very lucky to have an actual radio personality, Robert Rappaport of Arizona Public Media, narrating our weekly imaged captions. And we’ve been especially lucky when some of our fantastic language volunteers have made their own recordings to accompany their texts as well.

But we’d like to see who else has talent. If you have a good voice and want to volunteer a bit of your time, we’re looking for folks to help us record our translated captions: Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Greek. We often use a computer voice for narration and while it’s not bad, it’s not the same as a person. We make these audio clips mostly for the visually impaired, so your help will go to help everyone learn about Mars.

So if you’re interested in being Mars’ next recording star, contact us at hitranslate@uahirise.org for more info.

Everything is a teaching moment.

Really.

We’re lucky to get a lot of feedback through our website from the public. Lots of folks asking good questions, or need some clarification on something.

BUT THEN WE GET THE SCREAMERS.

Red flags go up, hackles raise, trepidation sets in. When we get feedback in email with something in all caps, we expect the worst: why are you hiding stuff? Why won’t NASA release (insert favorite pareidolia image here)?

One question that’s often hard to decipher is when we’re asked for the original image. A light red flag goes up: what do you mean? And why are you asking in all caps?

But, it’s the nature of the job: everything is a teaching moment. Everyone gets a respectful answer, or a kind request for a bit more information about what they mean. Most folks are satisfied and plunge right back into looking at our images of Mars. Every now and then, a person likes to start a…discussion based on some well-defined positions.

But every moment is a teaching moment, we say.