Spirits high at Shell Eco-marathon

Friday, August 8. 2008
In the news

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.

Gas sipping car
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.

Posted by Robin Wolstenholme in Cooperation, In the news at 16:50 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)
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DMCii ups Emergency on Call Officers

Tuesday, April 29. 2008
In the news

Volcano, Ecuador © NASRDA
The Disaster Monitoring Constellation's (DMC) operating company, DMCii, has been training up additional members to support emergency operations. These new Emergency on Call Officers (ECO) will expand the existing team to support the world's earth observing satellite feet in the event of major natural disasters.

Following recent training event, DMCii now provides 3 Emergency on Call Officers to service the International Charter for Space and Major Disasters. When the Charter is activated for a Major International natural disaster, the ECO's use there expertise to select and task different types of satellite appropriate to the disaster. For example, so far In 2008 DMCii ECO staff responded to flooding in Vietnam, Bolivia, USA and the Tungurahua Volcano in Ecuador.

Posted by Robin Wolstenholme in Cooperation, In the news at 13:51 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)
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Students Battle for Space Supremacy

Tuesday, April 29. 2008
In the news

Students from all over Britain have taken part in the BNSC’s “Space Experiment Competition”, the brainchild of SSTL’s very own Dr. Stuart Eves. From a sea of hopeful entrants, the judges have now whittled down the contestants to 6 finalists. The remaining students are from St George’s College Addlestone, Helston Community College, Langton Star Centre, Schome Park Project, Shrewsbury School and UKHAS.

The ambitious experiments will study a variety of space exploration issues, ranging from how to stop Near-Earth space dust damaging space craft to minimising the affect of electrically charged particles on space communication. In the race to outdo each other the students have come up with some really innovative ideas, including proposing ways to measure the resistance of bacteria in space and even measuring the number of meteors entering the atmosphere. So if you’re a budding physicist or engineer or are just interested in space, get yourself to the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) congress in Glasgow where the winning proposal will be announced in October 2008.

Posted by Robin Wolstenholme in Cooperation, In the news, Space at 11:36 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)
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50 years of software in space

Tuesday, April 22. 2008
In the news

The Guildford Branch of the British Computer Society holds its monthly meetings on the University of Surrey campus.

This month's meeting "Fifty Years in Space - a Software Perspective" will review the synergy between space and ICT during the first 50 years of the space age (based on the author's 40+ years involvement in both sectors) and draw some conclusions for the future. Pat Norris MBCS, LogicaCMG and Chairman of the RAeS Space Group will host the lecture.

Here's the summary

Since the launch of Sputnik 50 years ago (October 4th 1957), the space age has helped push the boundaries of Information and communications Technologies (ICT). In the 1960s, the two main space applications were military surveillance and lunar exploration, both of which demanded more computing and communications capability than was available. Space projects still stretch what ICT can deliver, for example in monitoring global climate changes and in missile defence.


Thursday 24th April 2008, at 19:45 for 20:00, in Lecture Theatre E. There's no need to register in advance and University staff and students are welcome to attend, at no cost.

Posted by Robin Wolstenholme in Cooperation, In the news at 16:55 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)
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