To see the rest of our wedding photos click here.

The full press release from ESA’s website is below…

Mars Express to rendezvous with Martian moon
16 July 2008
Scientists and engineers are preparing ESA’s Mars Express for a pair of close fly-bys of the Martian moon Phobos. Passing within 100 km of the surface, Mars Express will conduct some of the most detailed investigations of the moon to date.

The series of fly-bys will take place between 12 July and 3 August. During the second encounter, the spacecraft will fly within 273 km of the surface. Six days later, Mars Express will close to within just 97 km.

Although the Red Planet itself has been studied in detail, very little is known about the origins of its moons, Phobos and Deimos. It is unclear if the moons are actually asteroids that were captured by Mars’s gravity and never left its orbit. Another possibility is that Phobos and Deimos are actually surviving planetesimals, bodies which formed the planets of the Solar System. They may also be remnants of an impact of a large object on Mars.

As Mars Express closes-in on Phobos, the data gathered will help scientists answer these questions. Mars Express has flown close to Phobos in the past, but this is the first time that the spacecraft will be less than 100 km from the moon. To achieve this proximity to Phobos, spacecraft operations engineers and scientists have been working together to optimise the trajectory of Mars Express to obtain optimum science results – this is not the case for routine fly-bys.

As it flies by at a distance of 97 km, Mars Express will image areas of Phobos that have never been glimpsed before. The High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board the orbiter will take pictures of the moon’s surface with the highest resolution possible, in colour, and in 3-D.

The data obtained will be added to a digital terrain model (DTM). This DTM will help scientists visualise what it would be like to stand on the moon’s surface by calculating its topography, or the elevation of its surface.
The camera may also capture an image of the intended landing site for Russia’s Phobos-Grunt mission, due for launch in 2009. The manoeuvres required to observe this site are an operational challenge, and the activity involves close cooperation between ESA mission scientists, the flight control team and flight dynamics specialists.

The Visible and Infrared Mineralogical Mapping Spectrometer, OMEGA, the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer, PFS, and the Ultraviolet and Infrared Atmospheric Spectrometer, SPICAM, will also gather details on the surface composition, geochemistry and temperature of Phobos.

The Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) will collect information during two flybys (23 and 28 July) on the topography of the moon’s surface and on the structure of its interior.

The Energetic neutral atoms analyser, ASPERA will study the environment around Phobos, in particular the plasma that surrounds the moon and also the interaction of the moon with the solar wind.

During the second fly-by, all efforts will be concentrated on accurately determining the mass of the moon using the Mars Radio Science experiment (MaRS).

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).

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.

“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.

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.