Meet: Ken Edgett

Who I Am, What I Do

I think I have one of the coolest jobs in the world! I study the planet Mars! My training is in geology--the study of rocks, dirt and stuff. As a kid, I was fascinated not only by planets, but also with fossils and volcanoes.

My work is a lot of fun, but it also takes up most of my time. I usually work at least 60 hours per week, sometimes much more. I get to travel from time to time. My travels have taken me to various desert settings in the western U.S. (my favorites are the Christmas Lake Valley area of Oregon and Moses Lake area of Washington), also I had opportunities to spend a week demonstrating The Planetary Society's "Red Rover" program at EPCOT Center in Disneyworld, Florida; and I have been to meetings in Moscow, Russia; Tskuba, Japan; and Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

I work at Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS), which is located in San Diego, California. My main responsibility at MSSS has been to select image targets for the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) onboard the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft. For over two years, now, I have been main person involved in the day to day selection of these targets. I also help inspect the pictures once they are received on Earth, I help put together the archive of data for the public and scientific community to study, and I help write the "web release" captions you see at our web site each month. I also write papers about MOC results, and in between all this MOC work, I try to find time to study other Mars data such as those from the MGS Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES).

In addition to my work with MSSS, on my own time I am involved with writing children's books and participating in a children's television show. With co-author Peggy Wethered and artist Michael Chesworth, our first children's book, "Touchdown Mars!" was published by G.P. Putnam's Sons in May 2000. This book is geared toward children age 4-8 and tells a tale of a crew of 8 kids and their cat going to and exploring Mars. The children's television show is called "Brainstorm" and airs on Saturdays in on Channel 3, KTVK, in Phoenix, Arizona. So far, I have been in nine 2-5 minute segments of the "Brainstorm" episodes as "the science guy".

Before I Moved to San Diego
Before I came to MSSS in February 1998, I spent 10 1/2 years at Arizona State University (ASU). I started here in June 1987. I completed a Masters degree in Geology in 1990 and a Ph.D. in Geology in 1994. Then I stayed for three more years. Between about 1992 and 1997, I had two main jobs at ASU: I was doing Mars research and I was directing an outreach program that shares the excitement of Mars exploration with kids, teachers and communities throughout Arizona and across the world. The program, called the Arizona Mars K-12 Education Program, is still continuing. I was also the editor of a quarterly newsletter, Mars Underground News for The Planetary Society from 1995 to 1997, and another one, TES News for the MGS TES project (1992-1998).

What I Do
I don't really have a typical, routine work day. I spend 2-4 days a week selecting targets for the MOC and evaluating the data that have been returned. I also spend a lot of time writing. Being a good communicator is essential in the career of a scientist or engineer. Good speaking skills and good writing skills are important so that you can share your scientific results with your colleagues and with the rest of the world.

My research is mostly about the geology of Mars. I have studied impact craters, volcanoes, channels and sand dunes on Mars. I contributed to the process of helping the Mars Pathfinder team select a landing site, and did some research about the Ares Vallis region that helped in deciding whether to land there. (I didn't pick Ares Vallis, though I had proposed landing in the Cerberus region south of the Elysium volcanoes. I also advocated a site in the dark wind streak coming from the crater Trouvelot in western Arabia).

Besides Mars, I have done research and field work on sand dunes near Moses Lake, Washington, and in Christmas Lake Valley, Oregon. I enjoy doing field work and being out of the office, but I don't get to do it as often as I'd like.

How Did I Get Here?
I am barely old enough to remember the first Apollo Moon landings. I started Kindergarten in Fall 1970. I can remember some of the later Moon landings, especially Apollo 17 (the last one). My sister and I used to pretend we were Moon astronauts. We would take paper grocery bags and cut them to make our own space suits (large bags for the body, smaller bags for the helmet). We would decorate our suits and we would jump off of chairs to simulate the high bounces that the astronauts would make when they were walking around on Mars.

When I was in fourth grade was when I really got interested in Mars. My teacher gave us spelling homework, which we had to practice before each test. To practice the words, he encouraged us to try to write stories with our spelling words, using all the words in a single story. So I did. I wrote really weird stories about "Joe the Martian." To make my stories better, I would read about the planets from books in the school library. I got really psyched about Mars because my character, Joe, was from Mars. That was in 1975. The next year, 1976, the Vikings landed on Mars. It was awesome! I thought the pictures sent back by Viking 1 and Viking 2 were the coolest things I had ever seen. I would stare at the pictures for hours and hours, and imagine myself walking around on Mars, picking up the rocks and kicking at the little drifts. It was neat!

I grew up in Rochester, New York. This is in western New York, about 60 miles east of Buffalo (yes, where Buffalo Wings come from). They get some pretty mean winters up there. The winter of 1976-1977 was especially exciting for me, I was in sixth grade. We had a humongous blizzard that year. The drifts that were created in the snow reminded me of the pictures of drifts at the Viking 1 site on Mars. I would go outside and play in the snow and pretend that it was Mars.

That was it. I was hooked. First "Joe the Martian," then the Viking landings and the Blizzard of '77.

When I was in high school, NASA and the National Science Teachers Association held a contest called the "Space Shuttle Student Involvement Project." Kids could write proposals for experiments that would be flown on the shuttle. Some kids actually got to see their experiments fly in space! I tried this competition three years in a row (10-12th grades). In 10th grade I only got a "certificate of participation." But in 11th and 12th grade, I was a "regional winner," two years in a row! As a regional winner (my region was New York and New England), my teacher and I got to go to the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland for a week to explain my proposal. Neither of my projects that I proposed to fly on the shuttle were ever selected to actually go, but the experience I had was very inspiring.

I already knew in high school that I wanted to go to college and get a degree in geology. I started looking for a college to attend when I was in 10th grade. I wanted to study geology because my two passions were planets and fossils. I actually found a college that looked cool. There was a professor there that worked with fossilized star fish, so "fossils" was the direction I leaned when I chose to go to Earlham College.

Earlham College is a small liberal arts school in Richmond, Indiana. The college has an excellent geolgy program; I learned all of the basics and learned them well because the professors spend a lot of time with the students to help them learn. Going to this college was a fantastic experience.

When I was a junior in college, something terrible happened. I was watching it live on television, as it was happening. The Space Shuttle Challenger blew up. Seven people were onboard, including a school teacher. I had never experienced anything like this before. It was very devastating for me. The explosion put the whole space program in doubt for a few months. But this explosion helped change my direction, back toward planets rather than fossils. I was determined to be a part of the space program, and determined to play a role in exploring the planets.

I managed to get an internship at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas during the summer of 1986 (when the shuttles were still grounded). Living near the Johnson Space Center was an incredible experience. Meeting astronauts, seeing Moon rocks, talking with various experts on space and planetary geology, it was great. That was where I started to do Mars geology research. I worked with photos and infrared observations from the Viking orbiters.

A year later I started graduate school at Arizona State University. ASU is one of a small handfull of universities around the U.S. that offers the opportunity for people to study the planets. ASU is particularly good for students that want to focus on the geology of planets, because there are lots of opportunities to explore real landscapes on Earth that are similar to those on planets like Mars.

I started a Masters Degree in Geology in 1987 at ASU. I finished the degree in 1990 and then decided to do a Ph.D. It was not an easy decision to make, but I decided that it would open lots of doors for me. If I left, many of these doors would close. So I did the Ph.D. and completed it in 1994. My research focused mainly on sand dunes, both on Mars and Earth. I also started the Mars K-12 Outreach Program at ASU during this time. I finally left ASU and moved to Malin Space Science Systems in February 1998.

Personal Stuff I was born in 1965 in Buffalo, New York. I spent most of my childhood living in the Rochester, New York, area, only a few miles from Lake Ontario. (They have the best cheeseburgers in the whole world there... especially check out "Schallers" and "Char Broil," both on Island Cottage Road near the lake, if you are up there! Ask for them on hard rolls, and make sure you get hot sauce on 'em!).

I have two brothers and three sisters. Two of my sisters and my two brothers are from South Korea; they were orphans and my parents adopted them in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Our family took many camping vacations when we were kids, so we got to travel a lot. My favorite trips were to Banff and Jasper National Parks in Alberta and to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, Canada. We also did many trips to Vermont in the summertime to go fishing and canoeing.

I now live in Carlsbad, California. The coolest thing about where I live is that I can walk to the beach (Pacific Ocean) in only 20 minutes. Carlsbad is nice because it is far enough away from the smog you get down in San Diego or up in Los Angeles. It is also neat-o in the spring because they have farms that raise flowers, which bloom on the hills and look magnificent!

I really like living in the western U.S. because the it has a lot of wide open spaces. I drive a year 2000 Saturn (it's a planet, after all), and one of my favorite things to do in my free time is to drive, especially long drives through the desolate parts of Nevada and west Texas. I have never been married and I don't have any pets (I travel too much to be able to take care of a pet). I enjoy reading and writing. I like watching NHL Hockey, and I usually watch CNN and Independent Film Channel. I also like some shows such as "Simpsons," "Frasier," and "Friends".

Read More About It

I have written all kinds of articles. Here is a list of some that you might find interesting:

Children's Book

Wethered, Peggy, Ken Edgett, and Michael Chesworth, Touchdown Mars! An ABC Adventure, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 2000.

More About Joe The Martian

Edgett, K., The legend of Joe the Martian: How a fourth-grade homework assignment sparked a lifelong passion to study Mars, Science and Children, National Science Teachers Association, pp.14-17, February 1998.

About Mars Pathfinder's Results

Edgett, K.S., Mars Pathfinder, Sojourner, and a Cast of Rock Stars Captivate Earthlings, Earth in Space, v. 10, no. 3, pp. 5-10, American Geophysical Union, November 1997.

About Sand Dunes on Mars

Edgett, K., P. Geissler, and K. Herkenhoff, The sands of Mars, Astronomy, 21(6), 26-35, June 1993.

About the Arizona Mars K-12 Education Program

Edgett, K.S., and P.R. Christensen, K-12 education outreach program initiated by a university research team for the Mars Global Surveyor Thermal Emission Spectrometer Project, Journal of Geoscience Education, 44, 183-188, 1996.

Learn more from my Web chats
March 29, 2000
December 2, 1999
August 12, l999
February 11, l999
January 12, l999