Archive for April, 2008

Christina & Michael Are Getting Married!

Monday, April 14th, 2008

That’s right, the big day is fast approaching! Christina and I will be married this Saturday 19th April at St John’s Anglican Church in Ashfield, Sydney at 2pm. If you happen to be nearby, feel free to come along. All are welcome!

It seems like only yesterday that I asked Christina to marry me and she said yes but so much has happen since then. I moved out of my apartment to a share house to save money, Christina got a job in Canberra and we then eventually found somewhere for her to live, we held engagement parties in 3 states, I travelled to the US and have been beavering away at my PhD. In there somewhere I moved church and Christina and I started to attend LVAC, where we are involved in their new Night Church, which kicks off soon too. We have much to be thankful for and have been blessed immensely in the past year. We are pretty tired as well and are looking forward to all the wedding planning coming to an end, enjoying a relaxing holiday and settling into married life.

We hope to see you on Saturday! I promise to put some photos up when we return from our honeymoon, for those who can’t make to the wedding ceremony.

Posted in News - Personal | 2 Comments »

Latest Phobos Observations & Results

Thursday, April 10th, 2008
On Easter Sunday, the HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter imaged Mars’ moon Phobos up close for the first time. The spectacular images have been released today here and were alluded to about a week ago on the HiRISE Blog. All I can say is WOW! Hopefully these images will assist in solving some of the riddles associated with Phobos’ composition and it’s origin.

Phobos from HiRISE

Here are some of the other images…

Phobos from HiRISE #2 Stickney Crater from HiRISE Phobos from HiRISE #3

I’ve also noticed a few interesting papers and posters that were presented at the recent 39th Lunar & Planetary Sciences Conference related to Phobos. A paper was presented on the PRIME Mission Concept & Mars Sample Return, which I was involved with (see my earlier post), by Pascal Lee and some more work on the recent CRISM observations of Phobos and Deimos. There was also a poster about Mining Technology on Phobos and Deimos that has also sparked some interesting discussions over at The Martian Chronicles. There were also some presentations the Grooves on Phobos and Results from the Hyperspectral Imager on Mars Express. It is great to see lots more research happening.

Posted in News - Space & Aeronautics, Phobos Research | 5 Comments »