Michael West’s Blog

That’s right! The Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex, just south of Canberra at Tidbinbilla, was the first of the three NASA Deep Space Network tracking stations to receive the first images from the Mars Phoenix Lander that arrived at Mars North Pole earlier today. You can read about it here on the ABC’s news site and hear an interview with Glen Nagle, a friend of mine, who is also the Public Relations manager at CDSCC here. Well done to everyone out at Tidbinbilla on another great job! If it wasn’t a working day I would have been out there watching it live in the Visitor’s Centre as I did a few years ago when the second of the Mars Exploration Rovers landed.

The Mars Phoenix Lander arrived safely at Mars’ North Pole earlier this morning and here are some of the first images it just sent back. WOW!! I can’t wait for the colour ones

Christina and I have now returned from our honeymoon, are settling into married life and have returned to work. We had a fantastic and relaxing time away and I will put some photos up here soon. We have also recieved a few photos from our families that were taken at the wedding and I’ll put them up as well. If anyone took photos at the ceremony or reception, we’d be most grateful if you could email them to me. It will be a month or two till we get the photos from the official photographer and we’d love to see different people’s perspective of the day as well.

Also, in other news, I have yielded to the pressure and joined Facebook! The main reason is because my brother Andrew is travelling the world for the next 10 months and is putting all his photos up there. It’s also been good to reconnect with people I haven’t been in touch with for ages as well. My profile is here if you wish to add me as a friend (I think you need to have signed up to Facebook to see my profile).