See other posts from April 2009

Goodbye for a while

Posted By Emily Lakdawalla

2009/04/26 09:27 CDT

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Sanaya Rose Lakdawalla was born on April 23, 2009 at 03:01 Pacific time, weighing 6 pounds 11 ounces and measuring 19 and 3/4 inches long. (Baby measurements, like temperatures, are one of those few things where I just can't bring myself to think metric. Google tells me this is 3,033 grams and 50 centimeters.)

Good news for my family of course, but it means that it's time for me to say goodbye, for a little while. Once I start getting any sleep at all, I'll miss the feeling of being a hub of information, receiving news from all over the solar system and feeding it back out to the entire Earth. But I've lined up a fantastic group of guest bloggers to fill this space while I'm gone. I'm very honored by the willingness of all of these scientists, engineers, managers, and writers to spend a little while filling my shoes, and gratified by how easy it was to find all these great people to contribute to the blog.Here's the list:I've collected bios for each of them here, so you can find out about their diverse contributions to space exploration. The guest lineup begins in May, the week after next. (Sanaya arrived a couple weeks earlier than anticipated, hence the gap.) There'll also be occasional contributions from Doug Ellison, Marc Rayman's monthly Dawn Journals, and frequent notes from other Planetary Society staff.

As for me, I'll be at home with both of my daughters, taking care of them and helping us all adjust to our new roles. My universe is suddenly going to be very small, much smaller than the spaces I usually explore. But as I am far less terrified about the whole business than I was the first time around, I figure that I will not be able to keep myself from reading and watching all of our robot emissaries push the boundaries of what we know. I'll be tuning in to this blog now as a reader, waiting impatiently for each day's installment.