Entries by Robin Wolstenholme

For several months Cliff Slogrove from SSTL’s Optical Payloads Group in Sevenoaks has lead a double life. When he wasn’t helping build optical payloads for satellites, he was helping schoolchildren from the nearby Langley Park School for Boys (LPSB) in Beckenham, Kent prepare for the Shell Eco-marathon Youth Challenge UK.

The Shell Eco-Marathon Youth Challenge UK is an annual fuel economy competition organised by Shell Global Solutions. Competitors from schools and youth teams construct a vehicle that meets the required safety aspects and run it around a circuit using as little fuel as possible. The best designs consider aspects of aerodynamics, rolling resistance, engine efficiency and driving techniques to achieve the highest fuel economy.

This year’s event took place 2nd-3rd July 2008 at the Rockingham Motor Racing Circuit. The LSPB team comprising 14 boys, 3 teachers and Cliff came fourth in the 17-strong schools class.

Their Honda GX31-engined Spirit 2 car achieved 646 miles per gallon, breaking the school’s previous record of 400.6 by 246 mpg.

Unfortunately, after that things started to go a little wrong for the team. The next run Spirit 2’s engine failed after 5 laps and the drive chain came off. Their second car, Spirit 1, had a run of 333mpg and improved to 359mpg but couldn’t compete with the likes of “Green Meanie”.

The students had fitted a GPS to Spirit 2 so they could see where it was on the track and the speeds it was doing. The speeds recorded were 9 to 25 miles per hour, with 2 burns of the engine per lap. The max speed was 35+ miles per hour!

Team LPBS won the “spirit of the event” award by lending our spare engine to one team and our spare carb to another.

The teams had to perform in the media spotlight, TV show News Round was filming and BBC Northampton radio even interviewed student Matt Shirley.

The MoonLite development programme, which is part of a proposed UK-led mission to the moon planned for launch as early as 2013, has completed its first three tests at the MoD Pendine test facility managed by Qinetiq with Flying colours. The session comprised the firing of small missile-like probes (named penetrators).

Breaking new ground
The penetrators travelled at 700mph along 300m of the 1,500m test track before hitting a sand target. The speed of impact and the material used were selected to replicate the surface of the moon and simulate the calculate g-force of 10,000g that the penetrators will be required to withstand whilst protecting their valuable analytical payload. See our earlier Space Blog (Shooting for the Moon) for details on the studies leading to this week’s developments for some background on MoonLite and its complement MoonRaker.

More than a missile
Equipment on board MoonLite (which stands for Moon Lightweight Interior and Telecoms Experiment) will carry sophisticated analytical instruments that can be used to explore the Moon’s subsurface. These include a seismometer which will measure “Moonquakes”.

The three penetrators tested at Pendine contained accelerometers, a data acquisition system, a power system and a variety of sensors including a drill mechanism, seismometer and mass spectrometer. The accelerometers recorded data throughout the trial and initial examinations showed that all other sensors survived the impact.

During the proposed mission, the penetrators will be deployed at high-speed by an orbiting spacecraft (MoonRaker) and will embed instruments into the lunar surface on impact. Once deployed, the scientific instruments will send measurements back to Earth, revealing the internal structure of the moon.

Catch the action
A BBC team witnessed the final day of the tests, which included some great video and animated iPlayer footage which can be played online (Missile Practice for Moon mission).

For more information on the background behind the MoonLITE mission, why not tune in to Sir Martin Sweeting’s discussion on the BBC or the BNSC.

SSTL has won a contract worth €1.6 million from Astrium GmbH, Germany to proceed with work on a new contract to develop and supply the Multi-Spectral Imager (MSI) for the European Space Agency’s (ESA) EarthCARE Mission.

Earth Explorer Missions are part of the Earth Observation Envelope Programme (EOEP). They are missions led by the European Space Agency to address primary research objectives. The EarthCARE Mission has been approved for implementation as the third Earth Explorer Core Mission. The mission will be implemented in collaboration with Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency who will provide one of the core Instruments. The EarthCARE mission has been specifically defined with the basic objective of improving the understanding of cloud-aerosol-radiation interactions so as to include them correctly and reliably in climate and numerical weather prediction models.

The EarthCARE mission aims to improve the understanding of the Earth's radiation balance and to minimize uncertainties in climate change prediction models by acquiring accurate vertical profiles of clouds and aerosols, as well as measurements of top of the atmosphere radiance. The Multi Spectral Imager produced by SSTL will provide information on the horizontal structures of clouds, such as cloud type and cover, and cloud optical and microphysical properties. The instrument's 150 km swath will be used to extend to three dimensions the validity of the aerosol, cloud and radiance measurements made by the active EarthCARE instruments which are all directed towards the satellite ground track.

This contract is for the first stage of the Phase B design study; the full Phase B is a 15 month programme. This will be followed by a Phase C/D leading to mission launch in 2013. SSTL is supported in the MSI programme by TNO from The Netherlands who are acting as subcontractors to SSTL.

This may sound like a familiar joke - but for the 5 RapidEye spacecraft built by SSTL a fit-check is an important preparation before the ultimate launch. The SSTL and MDA (the prime) launch teams visited the KB Yuznoye works at Dnepropetrovsk, April 14th – 18th, to conduct a spacecraft fit-check with the Dnepr launch vehicle.

Fit-check is an important event in the launch schedule as its purpose is to technically clear the way for successful integration of the flight spacecraft at the Cosmodrome.

The fit-check established that all the physical interfaces between the spacecraft and the launch vehicle were correct. During meetings, the launch teams were able to qualify the actual route of integration – an especially important activity when, as in this case, five spacecraft are being launched on a single launch vehicle.

So the answer, dear Space Blog reader is 5 - or at least 5 RapidEye spacecraft.