Excalibur Almaz Capsule in Westminster

The Space Tourism Conference took place at the Royal Aeronautical Society on Tuesday 19th June. I was unable to attend, but several friends went and reported that it was a very uplifting event, with so many companies making progress towards the first flights of their first commercial space vehicles.

Excalibur Almaz capsule
Photo credit: Amjad Zaidi

I met one of the attendees the next day, to visit the Excalibur Almaz capsule which was on display near Westminster. Some large posters were on display, to tell us full details of the long history of this vehicle:

Tour of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL)

I arranged to visit the Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL) after meeting a postdoc student back at the UKSEDS conference in March.  As I will be starting an MSc in Planetary Science at UCL in September, I was curious to find out what goes on at MSSL, which is part of UCL, 30 miles south of London, near Dorking.

Published!

I was delighted to wake up one morning in the USA to an email from a friend, Richard Painter, who was on my Arctic Science course back in February and is currently the projects officer for UKSEDS. He had received his copy of Spaceflight magazine (July 2012) from the British Interplanetary Society, and sent me a scan of my freshly published article about the UKSEDS conference.
You can buy a copy of the magazine here, or join the BIS here.

SpaceFest, Kitt Peak, Lowell Observatory, Meteor Crater

Gene Cernan & myself

I attended SpaceFest IV, in Tucson, Arizona, which took place 1-3rd June 2012. Guests included many of the Apollo astronauts, some shuttle astronauts, mission specialists and principal investigators of space missions, along with other space media personalities. There were three tracks of talks and meals with the astronauts.