Michael West’s Blog

To see the rest of our wedding photos click here.

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).

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.

I’ve been meaning to write this post for quite a while, but life is busy (as usual) so here it is now…

One of the real privileges that I have is to be an Australia Day Ambassador. This came about because back in 2006 I was a New South Wales Finalist in the Young Australian of the Year Awards - an enormous honour indeed. It was a privilege just to be nominated! There is a little more information about this here and you can find a list of the other finalists here.

Following this I was invited by the NSW Australia Day Council to participate in the Australia Day Ambassador Program. Thanks to the sponsorship of Woolworths, the Australia Day Ambassador Program sends about 400 high achieving Australians to community Australia Day celebrations all over NSW and Australia. Ambassadors are invited as guests of honour at celebrations around the country and are often part of the activities and events on the day. As part of the celebrations, Ambassadors are asked to deliver the keynote address which captures the true spirit of being Australian.

Its quite a big deal and something that I thoroughly enjoy as it has given me the opportunity to visit some fantastic places and meet some really interesting people. In 2006 I visited Tumut Shire Council and the towns of Tumut, Talbingo and Adelong and in 2007 I visited the Kyogle Shire Council in northern NSW and participated in Australia Day celebrations at a small town called Tabulam, west of the Border Ranges National Park. You can read a little more about my visit to Tabulam in an article that appeared in the ANU College of Science’s ScienceWise magazine by David Salt. See page 10 of the PDF or you can find the website for it here.

Each time I have had the opportunity to give an Australia Day Address and given my profession and my passion, I’ve spoken about Australia’s involvement in space exploration, past, present and future; and how Australian’s benefit from space derived services everyday. My speeches have usually been very well received - I guess mainly because its not the usual thing people would hear on Australia Day (most Ambassadors are sports people or media personalities - you can find a list here) - and has always resulted in some interesting conversations with people afterwards.

This past Australia Day I was the Ambassador to the Snowy River Shire Council and attended celebrations in Jindabyne, Berridale, Adaminaby and Dalgetty as well as a visit to the local elderly persons hostel. It was a jam packed day but one that I really enjoyed. The weather was divine and the region that we got to drive through were just stunning. In the lead up to and following Australia Day I got a little bit of publicity about my visit to the Snowy River region, including an interview on ABC Canberra Radio and a few other regional radio stations. I also got mentioned in Engineers Australia’s magazine and E-News and on Mars Society Australia’s website.

Being an Ambassador has been fantastic in the past. I hope I have the opportunity to participate again in the future.

Pascal pointed out something quite humorous in his opening remarks at the conference today. Keraunothnetophobia is the fear of falling satellites and it is quite apt given that Phobos’ orbit around Mars is decaying. Don’t worry though, it will take at least another 3-4 million years until it crashes into the surface of Mars and that is provided that the increasing tidal forces don’t rip the moon apart first into small pieces that will burn up as they reach Mars’ atmosphere.

Today my main job has been to unpack the numerous boxes containing artwork for the ‘Destination: Mars’ Exhibition we have received, catalogue it and set it up in the conference centre. I have been ably assisted by Camille Desportes and Julie Jones. Camilee is an intern with the Mars Institute and also a graduate student in Space Management at the International Space University in Strasbourg, France. Julie is an artist based in Nevada who is representing the International Association of Astronomical Artists, who are presenting the exhibition. Her website is here - she does some truly amazing astronomical and space related art. You can check it out here.

I’ve also assisted NASA’s Chief Historian, Steven Dick, with preparation of a display of historical documents related to Phobos and Deimos and in particular their discovery by astronomer Asaph Hall at the US Naval Observatory in 1877. There are some really interesting documents in the collection including a facsimile of the Presidential Commission, signed by Abraham Lincoln, that Hall received upon taking up the Professorship of Mathematics at the UNO.

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So why am I here in California for two weeks? Well I am helping out with the 1st International Conference on the Exploration of Phobos and Deimos which is being run by the Mars Institute and held at NASA Ames Research Center. I’m involved because back in 2005 I worked as an intern for the Mars Institute with Dr. Pascal Lee for two months. During that time I did a review of all the literature regarding the exploration of Mars’ two moons, Phobos and Deimos, in order to support future proposals for robotic missions to these unusual objects. Since then I have continued to work with the Mars Institute (I’m on the Board of Advisors) and helped out with the PRIME mission study (see my earlier post here). As such I am giving a presentation at this conference (the PDF of the abstract is here) and assisting with various logistical things, including managing the ‘Destination: Mars’ space art exhibit.

I hope to provide some photos and reports of the happenings throughout the conference. Stay tuned!

I flew to San Francisco today to attend a conference on the exploration of Mars’ moons, Phobos and Deimos that is being held at NASA Ames Research Centre in Silicon Valley. I will be here for a bit less than two weeks, but more on what I will be doing later. On the flight over I was lucky enough to get a seat at the front of economy class which has extra leg room and because the flight was half empty the seat beside me was empty as well. It was great and I even managed to get about 7 hours sleep!

Anyway, of all the people who could have occupied the other seat in my row, there was a ancient history lecturer heading to a conference at Stanford University. We got talking and discovered that he was from Sydney University, specialises in Greek history and teachers many of the Honours students at USyd. As is often the case it didn’t take long to realise that he knows someone I know - in this case Victor Shaw, a old friend from Sydney Uni who started out doing Engineering and saw the light and switched over the Ancient History. Proof once again it is a small small world.

Yes, I am still alive! Unfortunately I haven’t spent the last 2 months on holidays in Cairns either, as James suggested here. Life has been very very busy. Since the IPELS2007 conference in Cairns some of the following has transpired…

• I’ve had a new housemate living with us for two months (his name is Denis and he is visiting from Germany)
• Spent a week in Sydney at the Australian Space Science Conference
• The soccer season has come to a close - we didn’t make the finals
• I scored the winning goal in the ANU Research Schools Final, the Purple Shin - more on that later
• Been flat out in the lab doing lots of different things
• My first journal paper got accepted for publication - yippee!!
• Went to JT & Annie’s wedding in Sydney
• Indulged my passion for gardening and started a vegetable garden at home, only to see it wither in the heat
• And numerous other things…

More details will be coming soon, but the two big things that are coming up are pretty exciting Christina will be arriving in Canberra permanently this Tuesday and I will be heading to the US for two weeks in November to attend a planetary exploration conference at NASA Ames. The other not so exciting thing in the horizon is my PhD Mid Term Review on 22nd November - eeekk!