Image Credit: JPL/NASA. This is an artist's rendition of the Phoenix spacecraft on Mars. It has recently confirmed the presence of water ice near the Martian north pole. It landed May 25, 2008.

Hi, everyone, and welcome to a new blog at the Piggott Times website. I am Kenneth Renshaw, a NASA Solar System Ambassador/Saturn Observation Campaign member from Piggott. I have been asked to start a blog about astronomy and our nation's (and the world's) space program by our fine editor, Tim Blair. Anytime you have a question about space, let me know here, and I will try my best to give or refer you to an answer. I will try to update this blog each week or so with the latest news.

First, in a few days, the Matilda Pfeiffer Museum, here in town, will have on display an actual piece of the Moon and Mars! I have in my collection, and will be on display, 3 tiny meteorites. One is a piece of the historic 820 pound meteorite that hit Paragould on Feb. 17, 1930. Most of it is in the U. of A. Library in Fayetteville, but some small fragments are in just a few private hands around the world. This is a 2/10 gram sample.

Meteorites can also hit other planets, kicking up rocks from those worlds into space. These rocks can float around the solar system until some pieces can occasionally hit our planet. From chemical analysis, some meteorites have actually been proven to have come from the Moon or Mars. I have 2 very small fragments of those-1 from the Moon, and 1 from Mars. If you visit the Matilda Pfeiffer Museum (behind the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum), you can see those rocks, as well as a piece of aerogel (an insulation made from the lightest solid on earth-1,000 times lighter than glass) that was originally installed on the Spirit Rover (now on Mars) before a replacement was made before launch. I also have a piece of aerogel on display from the batch made for the Stardust mission. This silica aerogel was used to collect particles from the tail of a comet (Comet Wild 2) and return them to the earth.

Happy 4th of July to everyone.