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.

A friend in the public service here in Canberra has informed me, and to quote the relevant announcement, that…

“On 19 March 2008, the Senate referred the following matter to the Senate Standing Committee on Economics for report no later than October 2008 with an interim report by 23 June 2008:

The current state of Australia’s space science and industry sector, examining options to strengthen and expand Australia’s position in fields that strongly align with space science and industry, giving consideration to any national strategic coordination requirements and taking into account findings and policy options of the National Innovation System Review, with particular reference to:

1. Australia’s capabilities in space science, industry and education, including:
   
   1. existing Australian activity of world-class standard, and
   2. areas in which there is currently little or no activity but that are within the technical and intellectual capacity of the country;
2. arguments for and against expanded Australian activity in space science and industry, including:
   
   1. an assessment of the risks to Australia’s national interest of Australia’s dependence on foreign-owned and operated satellites,
   2. the potential benefits that could accrue to Australia through further development of our space capability,
   3. economic, social, environmental, national security and other needs that are not being met or are in danger of not being met by Australia’s existing space resources or access to foreign resources,
   4. impediments to strengthening and expanding space science and industry in Australia, including limiting factors relating to spatial information and global positioning systems, including but not limited to ground infrastructures, intergovernmental arrangements, legislative arrangements and government/industry coordination, and
   5. the goals of any strengthening and expansion of Australia’s space capability both in the private sector and across government; and
3. realistic policy options that facilitate effective solutions to cross-sector technological and organisational challenges, opportunity capture and development imperatives that align with national need and in consideration of existing world-class capability.”

Although the new Federal Labor government is going a little review/inquiry crazy, this is a welcome development. Kudos to Democrat Senator Natasha Stott Despoja for initiating this inquiry and for Liberal Senator Grant Chapman and others for co-sponsoring it. It is also good to read here in The Australian that the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Kim Carr, is supportive as well, which is more than can be said about his predecessor. Hopefully those conducting the inquiry will have a keen sense of history and become familiar with the Madigan Report (1985), the ‘An Integrated National Space Program’ report (1992) and Space: ‘A Priority for Australia’ (2005) and other similar inquiries of the past. This inquiry will also complement the soon to be released Decadal Plan for Space Science by the Australia Academy of Sciences’ National Committee on Space Science. I’ve contributed a little bit to its preparation, mainly in the education and public outreach arena, but not much.

Details about how to make a submission can be found on the relevant Senate Economics Committee website.

On Sunday afternoon I headed to Canberra Stadium to see Sydney FC take on the Central Coast Mariners in the A-League Pre-Season Cup. It was a good game which the Mariners won 3-0. There is a good overview of the match on the Football in the Capital blog. There was also a reasonable turn out of some 5,700 people which isn’t bad given how bitterly cold it was. Here are some of the other photos I took…

I went and saw Transformers at the cinema last night with some work friends and my house mates. It was awesome! One of the best action movies I have seen. The special effects were amazing and very smoothly integrated and there were heaps of explosions and cool car and aircraft chases. Rating - 5/5.

Last Saturday night I asked Christina to marry me and she said YES! We are very excited and looking forward to spending the rest of our lives together.

Now everyone wants to hear the story about how I proposed etc, so here it is….
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On this day 24 years ago in Hornsby Hospital, Sydney I was born! Mum tells me that it was raining when I entered the world just after midnight on March 16th, so I guess it was fitting that it was raining this morning when I looked out the window. Lets hope the rain sticks around for a while and helps to ease the drought. Thank you to those of you who have called and emailed me today. Your kind wishes are appreciated.

Does anyone know of anything particularly interesting that happened on this day in history, aside from my birth ? Please post a comment if you do.

Last night was the annual SkyFire fireworks display over Lake Burley Griffin. It is run by FM 104.7 and this year featured an F111-C doing its trademark dump and burn trick over the lake. I went up to Mt Pleasant and joined a few hundred other people to watch the fireworks. Fireworks are nortoriously difficult to photograph but I did manage to get a few good photos. Sadly, none of the shots of the F111 were all that good. It was a bit too bright for the camera to cope with. Very spectacular though!

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One of the joys of living in Canberra is that every few months a bunch of aircraft do fly overs of the city. Today was the Open Day for the Australian War Memorial and so we were treated to fly overs by several Navy helicopters, a RAAF C-130 Hercules and F/A-18 Hornet (shown above) and several historical aircraft from the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society, which are based in Albion Park near Wollongong. So I headed up to Mount Ainslie which is directly behind the War Memorial and took a few photos which are below. It was a spectacular display!

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I just discovered that to celebrate the ADFA Chief of the Defence Force Parade this Saturday Hawk aircraft from RAAF Base Williamtown will conduct a flypast over the Academy Parade Ground to celebrate the 323 Officer Cadets who have completed their initial military training at ADFA. The flypast will take place between 10:15am and 10:30am. It’s a shame I will miss it - I’m heading to Wagga with Jason and Naomi Barber to see my old friend from school Matt Beaver and his wife, Vanita. It should be a fun weekend!
Just to because I can, here is a photo of two Hawk fighters in flight. Details on this aircraft can be found here.