Jonathan Amos reports on the OSC Cygnus unmanned commercial freighters under construction at Thales Alenia Space:-

• The private spaceships taking shape in Torino -- Spaceman blog, BBC

The Cygnus spacecraft will have GPS patch antennas supplied by SSTL:

• SSTL antennas destined for ISS resupply vehicle -- SSTL blog

(Source: SSTL press release)

SSTL has commenced building a small satellite for the Republic of Kazakhstan that will provide medium resolution multi-spectral earth observation capability to complement the high resolution satellite that is being provided by EADS Astrium as part of the contract awarded to the company in October 2009.

The Republic of Kazakhstan is utilising the latest Earth Observation (EO) satellite technologies from EADS Astrium and its subsidiary SSTL to create a national system which will support its government with resource monitoring, resource management, land-use mapping and environmental monitoring information for policy and decision making.

The Medium Resolution Earth Observation Satellite (MRES) project highlights how systems from the two EADS Group companies can be deployed together to provide integrated multi-satellite space systems. The new EO system will include a high resolution mapping spacecraft and a wide-swath medium resolution multispectral mapping spacecraft implemented by a team comprising Astrium and SSTL.

SSTL celebrates 25 years of innovation in space

Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) celebrated 25 years of space innovation this month. The British company was incorporated on 11th June 1985 to commercialise small satellite research from the University of Surrey and has since become the most successful cash exit from a UK university spin-out when it was acquired by EADS Astrium last year.

The Guardian profiles Dr Vaios Lappas at SSTL, who is working on a deployable 'dragsail' to remove space debris from orbit:

• Space saver: the scientist who aims to get rid of space junk -- Guardian

(Source: SSTL Blog)

SSTL’s military space expert Dr. Stuart Eves has accepted a year’s secondment to the new Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) at the UK’s new Harwell facility to advise on space security. His principal responsibility will be as the authority on the Security and Resilience Unit (SRU) that will form part of the International Space Innovation Centre (ISIC).

Enough with the acronyms! ISIC is a joint venture between the UK Government and Industry, that is anticipated to evolve into a centre which supports both UK national requirements as well as international security-related space systems. The idea is to create a Hub of Innovation that will act as a seed-bed for innovation in the UK.

Stuart will also be expected to actively liaise with the newly formed UK Space Agency on space security matters in support of government policy making, since a close relationship between the policy and strategy aims of the agency and the executive elements at ISIC will clearly be
essential.

Continue reading...

Rocketeer comments: Congratulations, Stuart! Very best of luck in your new role.

Engineers at Surrey Satellite have designed and developed a "cubesat" small satellite which is intended to combat the hazard of space debris, by docking with defunct satellites, and deploying a 25 sq-m. plastic sheet as a "drag sail", to increase air resistance and accelerate deorbiting. They plan to launch a demonstration mission next year.

"Our system is simple and very low cost; but we need to demonstrate that it can be done," said Dr Vaios Lappas, lead researcher on the project and senior lecturer in space vehicle control.

"It would help make space a sustainable business. We want to be able to keep on launching satellites to provide new services; but unless we do something, the amount of junk up there is going to grow exponentially."

• Tiny cube to tackle space debris -- BBC News (includes video)

BNSC highlights the SpaceTech 2010 technology outreach meeting which took place at Rutherford Appleton yesterday:

• SpaceTech 2010 -- UK space scientists reveal the many benefits of cutting-edge space technology

The Daily Telegraph has a photo gallery on the current state of the UK space industry, and its ambitions

• UK space: in pictures -- boldly growing a £40bn business

Space makes an appearance as an issue in this election debate:

• Space emerges as an issue in this UK election debate -- Hyperbola

CaSE (Campaign for Science and Engineering) rebrands its blog as "The Science Vote" as part of its pre-election campaigns:-

• The Science Vote | Ideas on science and engineering policy towards the election -- CaSE

Sixth-form students work on ways to detect earthquake signals from space at SSTL:

• Student space project gathers speed -- SSTL blog

(Source: SSTL press release, 1st March 2010)

Twenty-six years ago today the University of Surrey team led by future SSTL-founder Sir Martin Sweeting launched the UoSAT-2 satellite (a.k.a UO-11) onboard a Delta rocket with LandSat-D from Vandenberg Air Force Base, USA on the 1st March 1984.

The 60kg small satellite was built in just 6 months and carried a Digitalker speech synthesiser and experiments including magnetometers, a CCD camera, a Geiger-Müller tube and a microphone to detect micrometeoroid impacts.

UoSAT-2 was instrumental in providing a communications link from the Canadian-Soviet Ski-Trek support teams to the expedition party in 1986. The position of the skiers' emergency beacon was calculated daily by Cospas-Sarsat ground stations and relayed to them and thousands of amateur radio listeners as a spoken message from the Digitalker on board UO-11. This is really worth a listen - visit the expedition web page. The message could also serve as an emergency channel to the skiers in the event that all other radio links failed.

UoSAT-2 also carried the Digital Communications Experiment (DCE) that was the first digital packet store-&-forward payload on a microsatellite. Find out more about this payload and see some photos of UoSAT-2 being built at Lloyd Wood’s personal UoSAT-2 pages.

The plucky small satellite was still transmitting last week on 145.825 MHz AFSK-FM at 1200 bps after 26 years in orbit! The small demonstration satellite’s on-board batteries are exhausted after 26 years in orbit, so the satellite now only operates in sunlight and has inactive beacons at 435.025 MHz and 2401 MHz.