Free The Best Australian Science Writing 2015 by Heidi Norman Page B

impacts on historic spacecraft, landing sites and other heritage.
    â€¢Â Â Work closely with the Space Heritage List Site Registrar, the archaeologists of each national or regional space agency and UN Committees as appropriate.
    â€¢Â Â Review Cultural Heritage and Conservation Management Plans for celestial operations.
    â€¢Â Â Conduct fieldwork as necessary within Earth orbit, on the Moon and Mars, and from the Kythera 5 Space Station in Venus orbit.
    â€¢Â Â Coordinate interpretation of sites and raise awareness of space archaeology among the general public.
    â€¢Â Â Coordinate research teams for missions on the research vessel Deadly Vorga.
    â€¢Â Â Sit on the UNSCEM Working Group on Space Taphonomy.
    â€¢Â Â Contribute to the policy objectives of UNCSEM.
    Salary: Three million Euros plus superannuation.
    Benefits: Personalised space and surface suits; four weeks annual leave; employees discount for accommodation in the Hotel Crillon Low Earth Orbit.

    All dressed up for Mars and nowhere to go
    Uncharted waters

The past may not make you feel better
    Christine Kenneally
    When Jeff Carroll was 16 he dropped out of high school. At 20 he joined the US army and was posted to Europe. He served in Germany for a year, and on his first trip home for Christmas, his father told him that his mother was showing signs of Huntington’s disease, a condition that Jeff had never heard of. Huntington’s is the cruellest diagnosis. Patients slowly lose control of their bodies, as well as their memories and their ability to think. They may undergo personality changes too, often becoming aggressive toward their loved ones. The degeneration is slow and relentless, unfolding over the course of years. Although Cindy Carroll was in her mid-forties when her body started to jerk without warning and she forgot one of her best friends’ names, she lived for many years afterward.
    After his father told him about the diagnosis, Jeff went back to his life in the service and later enrolled in an army biology course. When he returned to civilian life, he completed an undergraduate degree in biology and began working towards a PhD in a lab studying Huntington’s. During this period he got married, and in the last year of his mother’s life he and his wife had twins.
    By that stage Cindy Carroll’s body was so constantly overcome with the uncontrolled jerking and writhing, called chorea,that is typical of the disease that all her nursing home could do was place her on floor mats and hope she wouldn’t hurt herself. The night she died, Jeff brought his baby son to her, carefully placing him in the crook of his mother’s neck. It had been years since Cindy had shown any sign that she recognised her son, but when the baby nestled in to her, she was briefly still and seemed at peace. Her respite probably lasted only a minute, Jeff said, but to him it felt like hours.
    After his mother’s death Carroll told a reporter that the worst thing about the disease was not the fact that it is fatal but that it ‘destroys your personality and turns you into an object of horror for your family’. Yet that is not the end of it. Huntington’s disease is hereditary, and when people talk about things like destiny and genetics and whether it is wise or not to know how you will die, Huntington’s is often what they have in mind. Cindy Carroll died in 2006, six years after her own mother, who was also a Huntington’s sufferer. When Cindy was first diagnosed, Jeff and his siblings learned that because of the way the Huntington’s mutation works, they had a 50 per cent chance of developing the disease themselves.
    In 1993 researchers identified the genetic mutation that causes the disease. The discovery made an enormous difference to the likelihood that a cure would be found, and it led to the development of a test that can determine if someone will develop the disease. Before the