I just published my first article in a peer-reviewed journal, Advances in Space Research. It treats about how Active Debris Removal, even if performed despite all the political and technological issues with it, may not prevent the growth of the number of debris in orbit.
But hang on a minute, don't people say that the only way to preserve key orbits for future use is to perform ADR? Well yes, they do. And this is why it's important to make people aware of the fact that ADR may be insufficient to achieve what it's intended to achieve. Whether it's necessary is a whole different question altogether.

If you're interested in my paper please have a read. I'd welcome any comments, remarks or questions that you may have about it.

I was lucky enough to attend the IAC as one of several students sponsored by the European Space Agency's Education Office. This was a great opportunity to network with ESA staff, including the Director General, and other students from across Europe and other agencies participating in the International Space Education Board (ISEB). It was a great experience and I'm thankful to those choosing me. I'd definitely recommend to try and attend future IACs under ESA funding.

I gave a talk that was bridging the gap between what the debris modelling community, which I am a part of now, does and what the Space Situational Awareness (SSA) people do. I also suggested that perhaps Active Debris Removal is not mandatory unlike what most people think. It was generally very well received, felt a lot better too, and I even got invited to another conference organised by the NASA Orbital Debris Office.

So, in general, all very good. Besides, just how great it is that the best, solely from the technical point of view, conference I could attend is on Maui?

I had the pleasure to participate in the bi-annual workshop organised by the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES, the French national space agency) that took place in Paris. It was extremely interesting to get together with the world-leading researchers in the same field, some of whom I met for the very first time.

What made the entire experience even more exciting was the fact that I gave a 20-minute talk. I'd given a talk to similarly-sized audience (circa 150 people) once before, but this time most of the listeners knew more about the general subject more than myself. But I always enjoy being in the spotlight, so that was reasonably enjoyable even.

Even though this was my very-first conference talk I was reasonably content with the outcome. And got some very useful comments and feedback that I am sure will greatly help me in my research, which was one of the primary reasons why I wanted to give a talk so early-on in the doctorate.

If you're interested here's the presentation that I gave - it's generally about a proposed method to try and pro-actively deal with the space debris problem to try and save money while getting the most out of it.

Myself, two lecturers and a fellow PhD student from the University of Southampton formed a mixed team with some lecturers from Politecnio di Milano to take part in the 7th Global Trajectory Optimisation Competition (GTOC). It's an annual event that gets together world-class specialists. We have a month (now much less...) to solve a very difficult global optimisation problem that has been set by the last year's winners, currently Universita di Roma "Sapienza". I must admit that they outdid themselves in finding what appears to be a simply unsolvable riddle. But I like challenges and spacecraft trajectory optimisation, so one way or another I'm happy to be participating.