Daniel Apai's Blog on Exoplanet Exploration and Astrobiology
An incredible 24 hours! After a picture-perfect launch, Pandora is now in orbit, with solar panels deployed and alive (receiving commands from ground! After seven years of working on this project, it is so rewarding to see an idea become an actual NASA space telescope, pushing the frontiers of our knowledge. The launch from the…
We just wrapped up a wonderful week in California at the Silver Jubilee of the Summer Sagan School. The school explored exoplanet demographics with many exciting lectures and several hands-on activities and group projects. Many of the lectures and much of the discussion focused on sub-neptunes, an exciting, new type of planets that is absent…
Over the winter break, my family visited New Mexico’s White Sands National Park. The Park offers fantastic scenery and we hiked deep into the dune field. Trekking through the pristine white dunes was a beautiful and unique experience! Although it looks like pristine snow, the glistening dunes are made of gypsum. Spectacular scenery and it…
The Explorers Club is a famed group of explorers who have led scientific expeditions all over our planet – and beyond – for over a century. I recall reading – as a teenager – inspiring stories in the National Geographic about expeditions conducted by The Explorers Club. Given the long-standing excellence of TEC in scientific expeditions and advancing human…
Just completed a wonderful trip to D.C. to the AAAS Fellows Forum and a visit to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. I was honored to be elected a AAAS Fellow and enjoyed participating in the Fellows Forum, celebrating the new Fellows at the 150th Anniversary of the program. It was thrilling to share this honor…
It is a beautiful, sunny, but cool day in the little village of Servoz in the French Alps: surrounded by breathtaking snow-capped mountains – among them the legendary Mont Blanc – I am sitting on a tiny railway station waiting for the little red mountain train that will carry me out of the valley. With…
Just got back from majestic Sedona, Arizona, where my family and I spent Thanksgiving. Sedona is a charming and crazy amalgam of spectacular geology, amazing autumn foliage, exciting restaurants, and an eclectic mix of new age shops and centers. Believers of aura photos, energy vortices, and natural healing flock from all over the country to…
I always found whales fascinating and after a recent workshop in Seattle, WA, I jumped on a whale-watching boat. It was great fun – we have seen a pair of humpback whales and a fin whale, all set in an amazing landscape.
After two hours of hike up on a rocky trail in the Italian Alps, finally I stand at an elevation just above 2,500 meters, staring at a breathtaking and unique mountain range, the Dolomites, that holds an exciting clue to the habitability of our planet. With gigantic sharp white-gray peaks emerging from the lush green of Alpine meadows, these mountains rise where the…
Two weeks ago NASA has announced its new Nexus for Exoplanet System Science, which may prove to be a major change in the way NASA will fund exoplanet science in the future. Our UA-led team was part of the first selection and I, the principal investigator of our project, joined the program’s two-day kick-off meeting at…