I completed my registration as a STEM ambassador today, to help promote Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths to school age audiences. I look forward to helping out at both the UKSEDS (UK Students for Exploration & Development of Space) and the Kennedy Space Visitors Centre stands at the national Big Bang Fair at the London Excel centre, 14-17th March 2013.
“Frontier Mars” – Society VisViva
My team mate from Alpbach, Ingo Gerth, and his friend Roy Bijster who I met at SpaceUp EU, have set up Vis Viva, a society for space professionals where they are based in Delft, Holland.
Their first event was streamed live online today and the recording can be viewed here. Their guests were Dr Susana Direito, discussing detection of life on Mars, the amazing Dr Adam Steltzner talking about the engineering of the entry, descent and landing of MSL ‘Curiosity’ via Skype from NASA JPL, and Professor Bernard Foing, expert of Mars analogue research, which particularly interested me given my involvement with the Austrian Space Forum Mars analogue mission this year.
#SimulateMars – Austrian Space Forum
From 7th to 16th February 2013, I volunteered as part of the Remote Science Support team for the Austrian Space Forum’s Mars simulation mission, being carried out in Morocco for the entire month of February. My experiment MEDIAN was being operated by the field team of 10 people, and I was involved with the in-house mapping and geological projects, as well as helping to co-ordinate data from the field being sent out to remote experiment teams. Around 18 experiments were conducted and over 100 people from 23 different countries were involved in the mission.
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| MEDIAN in Morocco (c) OeWF (Katja Zanella-Kux) |
Thanks to Natalie Jones, a fellow RSS team member, on the first day of the official mission we enjoyed a phone call from Commander Chris Hadfield, live from the International Space Station, which was also patched through to the field as a total surprise.
The Austrian Space Forum published a profile interview with me and after the first fortnight, an update about MEDIAN was featured in the first mission science bulletin.
The second mission science bulletin contained information about our detailed photogeologic mapping project, masterminded by Anna Losiak. I was part of the Remote Science Support team who worked on this in detail, which involved layering optimised maps for the different experiments in order for flight planning to make daily mission plans, and then plotting what was actually carried out by the field in order to compare the planned and actual results, and the reasons for differences.
It was an amazing experience to be involved in a full mission simulation and the level of detail and professionalism achieved was outstanding.
Tim Peake & Space Boffins at the British Interplanetary Society
I was delighted to be invited to be on the popular “Space Boffins” podcast this month, especially when I found out the other guest was to be the UK’s first ESA astronaut, Tim Peake!
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| Tim Peake, Ralph Timberlake, Jane MacArthur Photo credit: Richard Hollingham |
We had great fun recording the session together with Ralph Timberlake at the British Interplanetary Society, who celebrate their 80th anniversary this year, where I got to talk about my methane detection experiment, MEDIAN, which will be running as part of the Austrian Space Forum’s Mars analogue mission in Morocco this month.
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Tim Peake, Sue Nelson, Ralph Timberlake, Richard Hollingham, Jane MacArthur |
Listen to the podcast here.
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| Tim Peake and myself |
Tim then went on to give an evening’s talk at the BIS, about his experiences on the NEEMO mission and other training. He graciously answered audience questions, and then Alistair Scott, President of the BIS, gave him a certificate of honorary membership with the BIS. We were all delighted when he opted to join us in the pub afterwards for more informal continued conversation about the life of an astronaut.
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| Alistair Scott & Tim Peake |