UK Planetary Forum Meeting

This "10th Annual Early Career Researcher's Meeting" took place at the Natural History Museum, London, where 15 early career scientists presented their latest work in 20 minute presentations.

I got involved by presenting my team's Alpbach work in the UKPF poster session, showing our Uranus mission proposal, and enjoyed an interesting afternoon meeting PhD students and finding out more about other peoples work at different institutions.

Mark Thompson - book launch

I was honored when a good friend invited me to Mark Thompson's book launch, held at the Royal Astronomical Society.  It was a pleasure to meet Mark, who is from Norwich like me, and it was a lovely evening. His book is now available from Amazon.

Mark Thompson, Stargazing Live

European Space Solutions

The European Space Solutions conference at Central Hall Westminster, was introduced by the UK Space Agency, and then handed over to Antonio Tajani, Vice-President of the European Commission, responsible for Industry and Entrepreneurship. He was followed by the Rt Hon David Willetts MP, Minister of State for Universities and Science.

David Willetts, MP, and Antonio Tajani, Vice-President of the EC

Post-Alpbach, Graz

I was extremely pleased to be selected as one of fifteen students from the original sixty at the Alpbach Summer School, to attend the Post-Alpbach follow up workshop in Graz.

We had all been on different teams previously in July, so we came together to work on one mission, expanding our research in more detail in establishing a viable Uranus mission proposal.

We are continuing to work on finalising a paper for publication and the team will be presenting this work as a poster at the Lunar & Planetary Science Conference, Houston in March and at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly, Vienna in April.

Post-Alpbach Team, Photo credit Ingo Gerth

Elon Musk at the Royal Aeronautical Society

Elon Musk gave a great talk at the Royal Aeronautical Society, shortly after the October successful launch of his Falcon rocket and flight of the Dragon capsule on the first official resupply mission to the International Space Station.

Me with Elon Musk

Sir Arthur Clarke Awards, House of Lords

The Sir Arthur Clarke annual awards were made at a lunchtime ceremony arranged by the British Interplanetary Society at the House of Lords, for significant contributions to the space community. Jon Culshaw was a brilliant compere, and the full list of winners can be seen here.

I joined the UKSEDS committee member for a photo with Jon Culshaw.

Jeremy Nickless, Zoe Versey, Jon Culshaw, Richard Painter, me, Ryan Laird
Photo credit: Jerry Stone

EPSC - European Planetary Science Congress

The European Planetary Science Congress took place in Madrid, Spain from 23-28 September 2012. We were invited to present our work carried out at the Alpbach Summer School both as posters and as 15 minute presentations in a special lunchtime session that had been added at short notice.

We were questioned by a Mission Specialist from NASA's JPL who was very interested in the summer school and kind enough to send positive comments back to the organisers afterwards.

Our Team Orange poster

We went on an excursion to the Centro De Astrobiologia, who gave us a fascinating tour round their modern facilities and gave us a demonstration of their machines to investigate crater formation. It was a great week and a wonderful opportuity to experience Europe's top Planetary Science conference, just before starting my MSc.

SpaceUp EU - a space un-conference!

The first SpaceUp EU unconference took place at the Cosmodrome in Genk, Belgium on 22-23 September 2012. The organisers, dedicated experienced space tweeps Remco Timmermans (Netherlands), Eico Newmann (Germany), Angie Kanellopoulou (Greece), Marco Frissen (Netherlands), Joachim Baptist (Belgium) and Alex von Eckartsberg (Germany) did a spectacular job of running a top event. The 100 spots sold out to people from 15 different countries and sadly last minute enquiries for tickets had to be turned away.

Our hosts: Marco, Remco, Eico, Alex, Angie, Joachim

ESERO-UK Space Education Conference

I'm very grateful to the UK Space agency for publishing my report on their blog.

Also to the Space Generation Advisory Council for publishing me in their September newsletter. 

Popular Astronomy magazine - published!

The September-October edition of Popular Astronomy magazine contains two feature articles I co-wrote with Nick Howes, about our trip to SpaceFest and other space attractions in Arizona such as Meteor Crater and Kitts Peak Observatory. The front cover features Nick's amazing images of the transit of Venus.
It can be obtained from the SPA here.
Many thanks to Nick Howes and to Peter Grego for publishing these.