My 44th & final presentation of recent results from ESA’s missions to the Science Programme Committee in our Paris HQ today 🚀🛰️✨
Why final? Because after 15 years, I’ll be retiring from ESA in just a few weeks from now 😱
It has been a privilege to be involved in so many history-making spaceflight moments over that time, with Rosetta & JWST perhaps primus inter pares, & I will miss my amazing colleagues 🙇♂️
No, seriously, nothing super secret, but I just need to find the time to write things down here. Some have been in flux a bit, but are crystallising now, so hopefully I’ll be able to be clearer soon.
@apolitosb Thank you, Jason – that’s very kind. We should have a chat soon, as I’ll very likely be heading your way (well, a lot closer anyway), & I’m keen to reconnect with ground-based astronomy too. Rumour has it that some mad folk are building a giant new telescope in the Atacama … 🙂
@markmccaughrean@apolitosb Same from me - your presentations to the SSAC were always a delightful moment of scientific wonder amidst all the politics and bureaucracy.
@Luke_Drury@apolitosb Thanks, Luke. Although those presentations were a lot of work, they were also a pleasure to make, as I learned a lot myself from putting them together & trying to create a wider context & connections between the disparate stories coming from the various missions.
The current SSAC and SPC were very kind in their appreciation of the final talk I gave them & the ones that came before. That means a lot to me.
@elizabethtasker Thanks, Elizabeth – more than happy to discuss, even in person if you can find a way of getting me out to Japan for a visit 🙂
It has been far too long since my one & only trip there, & I’d love to see it again. I have been working with a Japanese artist at a low level, but there could be a lot of opportunity for new scicomm collaborations.
@markmccaughrean You're very welcome to visit! The problem is I don't have a budget to leverage to pull you across. But if you had another reason to travel, then I could certainly arrange chats at ISAS (but we will seem very small after ESA!)
@elizabethtasker Hopefully we’ll find a way – we’d be keen to bring Space Rocks to Japan at some point, as I’m sure there would be a very engaged audience & lots of potentially interested artists & musicians. We have some contacts there, so we’ll see.
@elizabethtasker Indeed – this something we’ve long since discussed within SR. While in some countries in Europe, we could probably take a mostly English-speaking cast, for most we will need to work closely with local scientists & artists to curate a show in the native language. Ditto many countries outside Europe. So we’ll need good local scicomm contacts (hint, hint 🙂) to start that dialogue.
@markmccaughrean I’m not much good out of English either, sadly! The outreach I do is all for the international community. But I could try and find more useful people!
@JanWillemTulp Don’t worry, Jan-Willem: I think there will be plenty more opportunities for those, whether with some of my colleagues still at ESA, or with me in my new life.
I’m definitely not hanging up my science & scicomm spurs up yet. Quite the opposite, in fact 🙂
@grb090423 Thanks 🙂 I’d say that it’s only my retirement from ESA – there are plenty of new things ahead, with lots of science to be done with JWST & other facilities, & some cool science outreach projects afoot 👍
I won’t in fact be replaced – my role at ESA will disappear with me. Some of the functional things I do will be distributed to others to pick up, but much of the stuff I did with in presenting our science to our committees, the media, the general public, with artists & musicians, & at events won’t carry on, at least not the way I did it.
But I’ll be doing much of the latter myself outside & have quite a lot of interesting stuff lined up already 🙂
@markmccaughrean@grb090423 Honestly you made the space science stuff cool for a lot of people who might not have delved so deeply into it had they not met you.
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