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.

SGAC Newsletter - published!

As UK SGAC representatives, Ryan Laird and I co-wrote a report on our time spent at the Farnborough International Airshow in July 2012. This can be read on pages 14-16 of this SGAC August newsletter.

Mars Society UK AGM & Conference

The Mars Society UK AGM and conference took place on 25^th August 2012, at the National Space Centre in Leicester.  The Mars Society was originally formed in Colorado in 1988, and has had a UK branch since that time. In recent years the society has been restructured, and the new committee look forward to re-establishing the society and extending its membership across the UK.

National Space Centre, Leicester

The AGM re-elected Graham Dale as president, and then noted grateful thanks to Andy Nimmo who was retiring from his many years work as secretary. Paul Clark was elected in his place, and Robert Astbury volunteered to be the new press officer.  Jerry Stone has also joined the committee.

Flying a Cessna Skyhawk

Today, I flew a Cessna Skyhawk, during a 30 minute flight experience, courtesy of Tesco clubcard vouchers!

I didn't really know what to expect. When needing to spend some vouchers, this seemed to be the most fun option and I recently realised I had two weeks left before it expired. Thus, I arrived at the Goodwood Flying School, somewhat late, after underestimating the time to get there, being stuck behind a tractor, and finding their aerodrome somewhat difficult to navigate!

MSL “Curiosity” Landing event at the Natural History Museum, London

I joined a tense gathering at the Natural History Museum, just before 6am on Monday 6^th August, waiting to find out if the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) “Curiosity” would make it safely onto the surface of Mars.

Experts Dr Peter Grindrod from UCL, Dr Joe Michalski from the NHM annd Dr Matt Balme from the Open University were on hand as our panel for the morning, to guide and educate us through the landing as it happened.

Dr Peter Grindrod, Dr Joe Michalski, Dr Matt Balme

Alpbach Summer School 2012

The 36th annual Alpbach Summer School took place from 24th July - 2nd Aug, in Austria's "most beautiful village". 60 students from across Europe were divided into teams of 15 to design missions to the outer planets. I was one of four UK students awarded a UK Space Agency scholarship to attend, where I was placed in the Orange team and we came up with the iTOUR Investigative Tour of URanus mission in 8 days.

Our team reports and presentations can be found here.

Credit: Summer School Alpbach 2012/M.A. Jakob

A summary of Alpbach tweets can be found here.

Sir Patrick Moore's picnic

The British Interplanetary Society were again invited by Sir Patrick Moore to have a picnic at his home in Selsey, after the success of a similar event held in previous years. After weeks of rain, we were extremely lucky with glorious sunshine for the afternoon.

People set up their picnics in groups around the garden, while talks were held in the main marquee, and stands with a raffle, BIS information and models were there to browse. Halfway through the afternoon, they opened up the telescopes for people to admire. My friend Amjad, who I met in Florida at the launch of STS-135, was excited to see these:

Amjad