Well, this is it... NASA awaits.

It's all happening. Really quickly.

After months and months of paperwork wrangling, I finally got my visa last week. NASA booked the plane tickets on Friday. I am leaving on Sunday at 10.05 from Heathrow, and will arrive before late afternoon local time.

It's quite scary.

I start work on Monday in the automated software engineering group at NASA Ames lab. I'm going to be there for 10 weeks, then I'm going to two back-to-back conferences in Italy, and will finally get back to the UK in September.

It will be a long time to be away from friends, and of course from doseybat, but it's really quite an amazing opportunity, so I have to do it really. Well, I am, so it's a moot point realistically.

I'm quite nervous about going somewhere that far away for that long, not really knowing people locally. I know there are one or two LJ friends list people somewhere near, so take this as an Official Announcement:

I would like to meet up with people. :-)

I should still have net access while I'm there, so I'll be posting more about my experiences as the weeks go by.

Oh, I'll be working here:


The big building (which is enormous, apparently) is the world's largest wind tunnel. More specifically, it's the air intake!