Blog #3: Progress Check

I have finished my research! The novel took longer to read than I originally planned, but I have finally finished it. I was surprised by how many scientific details Weir used when writing this novel. The next step in my research process is to analyze the research I have gathered. The first step is transferring all the data I annotated for in the novel to a google spreadsheet. This will help me organize my data and make it easier to check its accuracy. I am organizing my data through five color-coded categories: travel, environment, survival, technology, and others. As an added level of organization, I am also putting either a B, C, P, or O by each piece of data to indicate whether it has to do with biology, chemistry, physics, or other. I have spent the past week doing this. Since I found so much information in the novel, it took some time to go through and type it all up. The next step is to check the credibility of the data. My original plan was to use the data from NASA's Mars rovers in the past decade. However, during my last blog post, I updated this to include multiple missions from multiple agencies, including the Perseverence rover, the Hope probe, the MAVEN orbiter, the Odyssey orbiter, and the Curiosity rover. Since each mission has its own focus, this will ensure that I will find information relevant to my data. I hope to be finished with this step in a few days to start working on my final paper and presentation. Stay tuned for my final results and research paper!