OK, first up – the final flight of the Shuttle. I’ve already given my reminisces of the Shuttle program below, but given that Atlantis is currently on-orbit, it’s making me somewhat nostalgic. I missed the launch on Friday afternoon as I was in transit and out of internet range at the time, which annoyed me. Looking at images of Pad 39-A after launch though is incredibly sobering – when will the next time be when we see a launch vehicle sitting on top of it? At least post-Skylab and ASTP, the last occasion when the Pad 39 complex lay idle, there was the promise of the Shuttle. This time round, not so much of a guarantee that we’ll ever see them used again. Yes, NASA is planning a new Space Launch System from 2016/2017 onwards, but for those of us who have seen programs founder such as SEI, X33 and the VSE again and again, it doesn’t leave one with much hope that hardware will ever make it to the pad. The difference this time round is that there is poor support for future programs at the top end politically, both in the White House and amazingly, at the top end of NASA – appalling leadership has given the impression of a space agency adrift. It’s heartbreaking – and especially as NASA faces a budgetary onslaught with the benefit of political protection for its core programs. If – and that’s a big if – we ever see astronauts fly on a NASA vehicle, it’ll be nearer the 2020 mark. Question is – to where? No money for the Moon, Mars – it’s a program without direction, or even a purpose. A prime case for cancellation if ever I heard one. The NASA of Apollo is of course long gone – that died one cold morning in January 1986 – but the way things are going, NASA of today will follow very shortly. And indeed, it’s heartbreaking.

The second bit of news is the Appropriations Bill from the House of Representatives regarding NASA’s budget – the headline item being the proposed cancellation of the James Webb Space Telescope. Of course, in the Tea Party Republican dominated House, a troubled and massively over-budget program like JWST was always going to be in trouble, being firmly in the sights of the budget slashers. JWST has had a troubled history to say the least – costs and technical issues were massively underestimated by NASA and the contractors, leading to at least a 4-fold cost overrun and a launch slip from 2013 to, at the moment, 2018 – really poor management exacerbated the problems. Now, as an astrophysicist, I think JWST is/will be a fantastic instrument – however, I’m not the one writing the cheques. Now, it should be mentioned that the House bill is just the first step – JWST has significant support in the Senate, and both the House and Senate need to both agree before the Appropriations can be signed into law, so the battle has only just begun. However, given that the Astrophysics Decadal Review was basically “we can only afford JWST”, the loss of JWST would make the next 2 decades or so extremely barren for astrophysics research. Fundamental research in all areas is under attack in the US, JWST being the prime case at the moment – a crazy situation, almost as if the US is deliberately trying to make itself into a second class nation in terms of research capabilities, all of which is due to political fundamentalism.

On all levels, it’s a week to scratch your head and wonder how we got to the position we’re in and to question our priorities. Then again, that’s obvious. Adult Swim put it best – ‘NASA’s budget = $19 billion. The cost of air conditioning in tents in Iraq and Afghanistan = $20 billion. That’s why we’re not going to Mars”

I’m rather dating myself, but I’m a child of the Shuttle era, and so the combination of the 30th anniversary of the first Shuttle flight with the upcoming final Shuttle flight is making me rather nostalgic.

I remember the first flight surprisingly well given that I was only 5 years old at the time. The launch was big news, given that it was not only the first flight, but the also first American space flight in 6 years. RTE covered the launch and landing live (unthinkable today), with the peerless Leo Enright providing the commentary. I was already space obsessed, so the launch of STS-1 was manna for me.

The early Shuttle program was amazing, racking up first after first – large crews, high flight rate, satellite launches and the first untethered spacewalks. It really was the barnstorming era of space flight. Of course, the warning lights were blinking red – the system was under strain, and eventually gave way with the loss of Challenger.

I remember the day of the Challenger disaster well. I just had walked out the door when the accident happened, missing the news flash on RTE. When I got home later in the evening, I didn’t believe my Mum when she told me – to idealistic 10 year olds, space shuttles simply don’t explode. When the Nuacht came on at 7, I saw the footage for the first time, and even then really didn’t believe it. (My Mum also broke the news of Columbia to me, 17 years later, in a rather odd replay of history).

Of course, the Shuttle program never really recovered from Challenger. NASA became very risk adverse, and became very conservative in the goals of the Shuttle program (until the corporate memory of the Challenger accident was forgotten – leading to the loss of Columbia 17 years later). The program did have its great successes – the Hubble repair flights, Shuttle-Mir, ISS construction – because it is a superb and highly capable vehicle. Yet due to those same capabilities, the inherent weaknesses of the Shuttle also lead to its terrible lows – the strained Shuttle development budget and political compromises involved led to the issues which led to the loss of Columbia, along with poor management both within NASA and from the White House. The Shuttle is a flawed vehicle – but development vehicles always are.

When I lived in the US, I was lucky enough to attend the launch of a Shuttle, STS-124. It was a fantastic experience, and despite the risks, I’d have gladly swapped seats with those on board. I was also fortunate enough to visit Arlington, and paid my respects to the crew members of Challenger (Dick Scobee and Mike Smith) and Columbia (Laurel Clark, Mike Anderson and Dave Brown) who are buried there. The two experiences sum up the Shuttle program for me. Triumph and tragedy. But a necessary step for us to becoming a true space-faring civilisation – and I consider myself lucky to have lived through an amazing piece of history.

Plenty of cool astronomy related stuff to blog in the short term, especially the wonderful M31 image that SPIRE and XMM produced and shown on the BBC ‘Stargazing Live’ program, but that’ll have to wait till later. Politics today, or more so Irish politics, as I’m a rather angry Paddy at the moment…

As an expatriate Irishman, I watch the events of not only the last few days, weeks and months with increasing anger. The country is a basket case, both politically and financially, and with little hope of either being sorted out in even the longest term scenario. The country is fecked, especially if the same old people end up holding the political reigns after the upcoming general election. While I have no time for Fianna Fail, and in fact detest them, I have no confidence in either Fine Gael or Labour to dig us out of the mess – nor with any of the political parties. However, the thing that really irritates me the most is that despite being an Irish citizen, I have no voice in the future political direction of my country. I am without the right to vote.

‘Huh?’, I hear you cry! Isn’t Ireland a fully developed country with full democratic rights for its citizens? It is – to a point. For those of us who are not ‘ordinarily resident’ in Ireland, we no longer have the right to vote, the argument in favour being that Irish citizens living outside of Ireland are not fully involved in the day-to-day practicalities of Irish life to be fully involved in deciding the nature of the Irish political landscape. Opponents of the rights of emigrants to vote also point out that as we are not paying Irish taxes, we also forfeit the right to vote.

However.

Many of us living outside of Ireland are doing so because we’re forced to – no employment in our field, you see. Can’t support my family on the dole. Leaving Ireland does, however, open your eyes to how badly run the country is – corrupt, parish-pump, tribal politics where TD seats are passed from father to son is a cancer which has debilitated the country since independence. The political parties know that for emigrants, the blinkers are off – and hence the extreme reluctance to allow expats to vote. The political parties fear us. Anything that’ll disrupt the status quo is to be feared by the good old boys back home.

The arguments re. lack of day-to-day interaction and taxation are straw arguments at best. It’s not the 1950′s anymore – thanks to the miracle of the Internet, we can read Irish newspapers, watch Irish TV, and are on Skype to home. The modern emigrant is plugged into home in to a much greater extent than was the case even a decade ago. It’s not like it was in previous diasporas, where apart from the odd phone call/letter and the local Irish paper you’d pick up from the newsagents in Kilburn, you really were cut off. We know what’s going on.

(As an aside, it’s one rule for them and other for the rest of us great unwashed. The then EU Ambassador to the USA, John Bruton (a former Irish Taoiseach), flew home from Washington DC to vote in the Lisbon referendum a few years back. This is actually illegal under Irish law – you can’t vote *at all* if you’re not ordinarily resident in Ireland. Of course, he got off scot free. Expats have been warned that they face arrest if they do the same. I urge any expats reading this to flout this and vote – I know quite a few who will. Alas, I can’t do the same – my name was taken off the electoral register without my consent after I moved to the US, so I’m not registered to vote in any case in my old constituency.)

As for taxes/financial input…. well, we’re sending back remittances to pay loans, mortgages and support families. Hell, as a UK taxpayer, I’m even contributing to the bailout. We’re paying for you to get out the financial crapper. So don’t even try to argue we’re asking for voting rights and offering nothing in return. The attitude of the Government and many others back home is ‘Thanks for the money, now feck off’. Well, no. We’re not going to be quiet.

I want to contribute to the political future of my country, as I have a rather large stake in its political and economic direction. I want the opportunity to raise my kids back home, and for them to have good opportunities in life if they do grow up there – I don’t want to be in the position that my mother was in, watching her son leave for distant shores. I’m an Irish citizen, and despite the incompetent good old boys who’ve run the country into the ground, I’m proud to be an Irish citizen. I just want to be able to exercise my voice as an Irish citizen in how my country is run.

No other EU country denies its overseas citizens the right to vote, now that the Greeks have been forced by the European courts to back down and give their overseas citizens the right to vote. War torn countries like Iraq and Southern Sudan allow their diasporas to exercise their democratic rights and participate in the political future of their countries. The USA allows postal voting. Why can’t Ireland? The answer, the only answer is and can be, that they fear us and that we’ll end their cozy little system of corruption and privilege. With up to 50, 000 Irish citizens expected to emigrate this year and no end to Ireland’s financial turmoil in sight, this issue will only increase in its importance for the years ahead.

I’m either an Irish citizen or I’m not. Give me my vote.

I will however have a few in the next few days – and quite timely, given the results of the Spending Review will be publish imminently. Let’s put it this way, the scientific capacity of the UK will be decimated by this, and quite frankly, may never recover.

More of which anon.

Just back from a quite frankly crazy two weeks of travel – I spent a few days in Padova, Italy for a couple of Herschel meetings – the first being for the SPIRE consortium, the other for the SAG1 team. Padova is an absolutely beautiful city, and the observatory there was home to Galileo when he first turned a telescope to the skies 400 years ago. Flying BA didn’t actually suck, for once – and I even flew back to Gatwick rather than Heathrow from Venice, which was a godsend. Pity I didn’t have time to explore both Padova and Venice – that’s the bane of being an astronomer – you get to go to nice places, but you’re working and never see anything, so you may as well be in Brixton for all intents.

I also managed to cram in a week of vacation time back in Ireland with the family (the kids turned 3 and 1) – unfortunately with kids, you’re on the go all the time, and thus feel utterly knackered when you get home as a result. (The 14 hours of travel via train and ferry didn’t help – flying with a 3 yr old and a 1 yr old simply isn’t on). So today, I’m going to enjoy the sun and the football with a very nice cold bottle of beer – and yes, I’m supporting Germany, but really only to annoy my very unpleasant neighbour on one side. The neighbour on the other is not only Scottish (and extremely nice), but also a former professional footballer for Charlton, so he’ll be joining me in my support for Deutschland ).

In astronomy news, I’m chuffed to have gotten observing time on Gemini South again – so preparing my Phase II submission for this, plus work for SPIRE, plus working on proposals for the Open Time call for Herschel observing programs will mean an extremely long and hard week ahead – not helped by the hot, sunny weather here in London or the lack of air conditioning in my office….

As you might expect, I’m a football nut. So much so, that if I’d not decided to go down the science route, my career choice would have been that of a football journalist – Brian Glanville was always a favourite read of mine, and World Soccer was a must-buy every month. This is the eighth World Cup I’ve watched – 1982 was my first, and thus still have fond memories of that great Brazil side of Socrates and co, and the ill-fated French side that were cheated out of a final appearance by Harald Schumacher’s GBH on Patrick Battison. Still have very pleasant memories of going out to play football with friends straight after and re-enact what we’d just watch – I was always Karl-Heinz Rumminegge for some reason.

But it wasn’t until Euro 88 and watching that glorious Dutch side (and Marco van Basten’s classic in the final) that I became an obsessive – I watched literally ever game I could, and drove my family nuts in the process as I’d taken over the TV completely. Given the opportunity today, I’d do the same – but I fear my wife too much to try.

So what am I looking forward to this time round? Good football, good craic and for Holland to win – the Total Football teams of Cruyff, van Basten and Bergkamp were always a joy to watch but always fell short. Maybe this time round – and they certainly have the midfield and front line to go one step further this time…..

I’m off to Italy for a Herschel meeting tomorrow, so I expect the SPIRE team will make some opportunity to watch games in a very nice social setting. With plenty of nice wine, hopefully.

It’s amazing to think it, but today, May 14th, is the first anniversary of the launch of Herschel – and its been quite a year, to say the least.

It doesn’t seem like 12 months – this time last year (literally, as I write this), I was sitting in a large lecture theatre at the Rutherford Appleton Lab in Oxfordshire with about 200 others (a mix of people working on Herschel and their guests) waiting for launch time to approach. To say I was on tenderhooks would be an understatement – if things went awry, I was out of a job (which happened to people after the lost of CLUSTER in 1996), something which would be pretty disastrous career wise, but also given the need to support my soon to expand young family. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.

The ride uphill on that Ariane was the 26 longest minutes of my life, even more so when the telemetry suddenly stopped. Luckily, it was due simply to the change over of tracking stations, so a major heart attack/numbness/crying was averted. Once Herschel separated from the Ariane and Planck, it was finally time to relax. And get very, very drunk. Needless to say, a lot of alcohol was consumed that night, including the very fine ‘Herschel’ rioja. A fantastic day and a fantastic evening.

The next year was amazing, but hard work – we needed to get the telescope (and our instrument, SPIRE) up and running and properly calibrated so as to produce scientifically useful data for our observers. The problems with HIFI certainly ramped up the pressure – suddenly, we had all this extra time to observe with, so the pace for a few months afterwards was unrelenting as we were putting together observations, looking at the results and tweaking the telescope as a result to improve the next batch, all under a very tight schedule.

It was a pretty fantastic feeling, though, once the first regular science (versus engineering/calibrations) observations were performed in October – I guess it’s a bit like the pride of seeing your kids off to school for the first time. Once HIFI came back online in the new year, we were sailing. Herschel was working beautifully.

The last few months have been equally been hectic – as the science data has flooded in, the Herschel research consortia have been very busy processing/analysing their data and writing papers. The sheer volume of stunning new results at ESLAB 2010 last week is a testament to the sterling work of the Herschel instrument teams and the research consortia – Herschel and its individual instruments are engineering marvels, and the science coming out is amazing. Well done everyone, the kudos are well deserved.

There’s a swarm of papers on the astro-ph archive in the last few days (and yours truly is a co-author on quite a few, and first author on one), all top-notch stuff – all will be published in the Astronomy & Astronomy Herschel special edition in the next couple of months, but keep an eye out for press releases to accompany them as well. (If you want to look on the astro-ph archive (which is free), follow this link.

It’s been a fantastic year (and capped by the birth of my daughter, now nearly a year old) – thanks everyone, it’s been an absolute pleasure to work on Herschel. Here’s to quite a few more birthday anniversary celebrations for this remarkable observatory. Now, if I could only find my camera…. there’s a lot of incriminating photos from this time last year….

(Oh, and let’s not forget fond birthday wishes to our friends at Planck!)

…. in soggy London, and I have to admit, I’m rather zonked. ESLAB was tremendous fun, full of great talks and was fantastic to meet up with colleagues across the Herschel project both scientifically and socially (and boy, do astronomers know how to knock back the booze…..). It’s such an intense week though – early starts plus around 12 talks a day – that basically it’s just overload central by the end of the week. As a consequence, it was nice to head home – even to screaming, hyperactive almost 3 and almost 1 year old kids and a rather frazzled wife.

A number of travel firsts for me – first trip on Eurostar, and first time in Belgium and Holland. Very impressed with Eurostar, amazingly quick to Brussels from St. Pancras. Not quite so impressed with the Belgian railway system (rather slow, and our train to Rotterdam noticeably sped up once we crossed the border into Holland), as our train back to Brussels from Rotterdam was cancelled – luckily as we had the Eurostar connection to make, we were bumped up to the Thalys high speed train to Brussels Midi, and made our connection just in time. Very much like the Thalys trains – definitely will use them again. Rather a step up in class from First Great Western, and everyone’s favourite, Irish Rail…..

An enjoyable, yet tiring, few days – time to sit on my backside for the weekend before more (UK based) train journeys next week… it’ll give me time to digest the UK election results/fallout, the football I’ve missed (and will watch) and the mad news that Ireland will be contributing $1.3 billion to the Greek bailout. Did we find it behind the sofa?

I’m currently sitting in the ESA ESLAB conference in Noordwijk, Holland, listening to a barrage of new results from Herschel. It’s been an extraordinarily busy few months for us all, finally sitting down with our first science-quality datasets from the various instruments on Herschel, and reducing them/analysing the results, and finally, writing the first papers.

Most of us have had their Science Demonstration papers accepted by the ‘Astronomy & Astrophysics’ journal – generally, the responsible space agency (ESA in this case) works with one of the professional astronomy journals to publish short papers in a ‘special edition’ of the journal, which is given over entirely to those results. The fruit of those labours are being presented at Noordwijk this week – in my case, my work on the Dwarf Galaxy Survey was quite pleasantly namechecked and shown by the project’s PI, so I was quite understandably chuffed. For those of us working on the instrument teams, the last few years of suppressing our own scientific output to get the instruments working has been well worth it – the bonus is that we get to be part of large consortia, doing mind-blowing, cutting edge science as a result.

One of the nice bonuses of conferences is the social aspects – dinner and trips to the pub, after long, long days in the conference hall, hits the spot quite nicely! Good people, good company, and great science – not a bad combination, at all.

Only one last day left for the ESLAB conference – to follow it, keep an eye on the Herschel mission blog (which I contribute to), or on Twitter, using the #eslab2010 tag.

(I was going to blog on the interesting post regarding scientists and data access to the community at large at the Galaxy Map blog, but Dave Clements already did a good job in responding. It’s a worthwhile discussion – check it out.

The UK physics community is still reeling from the massive slashing of funding to the STFC. Funding for some major projects has been discontinued (including the UK contribution to the Gemini Telescopes, a particular favourite of mine – this had been expected, given the extremely clumsy attempted withdrawal 2 years ago), while funding for others has been reduced. No further UK support for missions such as XMM (whom STFC had lobbied with ESA to keep operating), Venus Express and SOHO.

The *worst* bit though is the 25% reduction in funding for fellowships and Ph.D. studentships – in essence, it makes life extremely tough for a) those of us currently in postdoc positions who will be looking for a more permanent position within the next couple of years and b) new students wishing to move into a career in physics. Scenario a) affects me the most – at the moment, my position is ESA funded – however, if I wish to stay where I am (or stay within the UK), I need STFC funding. Fellowships, already thin on the ground, will become nigh on impossible to get as a result of this decision.

Of course, I’m not the only person affected by this – many other postdocs will be in the same boat, and the number of new Ph.D. students will be badly affected. Indeed, the cumulative effect is to basically nobble the career prospects for many at the lower rungs of physics academia in the UK for the next decade or so. No positions to move into, no funds for projects either. Given this, many of us will be reviewing our career options over the next while – some will move overseas to research positions in Europe, the US and elsewhere, and some will leave academia completely. As for myself, with a young family, moving beyond the UK is a non-starter….. so a lot of reflection lies ahead.

Herschel (which as you may know, is the ESA program I work on) had a very successful First Results workshop in Madrid at the end of last week. Principal investigators from the Key Projects presented the preliminary first results from their projects – the results of which you’ll see shortly in a torrent of press releases. Some of the images have already been released by ESA – my favourite has to be the gorgeous SPIRE/PACS composite image of the Eagle nebula.

The project I work on – the dwarf galaxy survey – also had its results presented in Madrid by our PI. But our stuff isn’t as pretty, so no ESA press release! All of us are furiously working on papers to be published in a special edition of ‘Astronomy & Astrophysics’ in the summer of 2010 – fun and busy times lie ahead. Herschel is a *superb* instrument, and thanks to the dedication of a *lot* of people, will continue to churn out superb results for the remainder of the mission. Cheers to all my colleagues across ESA and our international partners – it’s been a fantastic year, and fingers crossed for an equally good 2010. Especially as HIFI will begin operations again!

Finally…. I’m off for two weeks of much need R&R with my family. Have a wonderful Christmas and a very enjoyable New Year, and hopefully Santa will be in generous mood to you