Space competition approaches final with a bang

Friday, August 8. 2008
In the news

The Space Experiment Competition is now approaching the final, which will be held at the IAF congress in Glasgow on 3 October. Six teams have been downselected to compete for the pize of flying their experiment on an SSTL mission in the 2010 timeframe, and all six have now had the chance to visit SSTL and take a tour of our clean-room.

Indisputably the most entertaining question we were asked during these tours was

"Do you have a 'No Farting' rule in the clean room?"

...we're still trying to think of an appropriate response!

Minister Ian Pearson
At BNSC's invitation, the teams have also had the opportunity to attend the Farnborough international airshow and present their experiments to Science Minister Ian Pearson, who expressed his admiration for the high quality of the science that the teams were hoping to do. All the teams were presented with copies of the book "BANG!" as a momento of their participation in the competition.

The teams have until September 12th to finalise their designs and submit them to the judging panel, which includes Colin Pillinger of the Open University, Pallab Ghosh the BBC's Science Correspondent, and Keith Mans the president of the Royal Aeronautical Society.

Further information can be found at www.spaceexperiment.info, and the BBC have also been following the competition (see Space experiment contest launched, Six teams vie for satellite prize) aswell as industry well wishers SatNews (SSTL Pumps Up Students With Awesome Sat Creation Contest)

Posted by Robin Wolstenholme in In the news at 17:12 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)
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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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New imager will help climate modelling

Wednesday, May 28. 2008
In the news

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.

Posted by Robin Wolstenholme in In the news at 14:46 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)
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DMC captures Burma flood satellite images

Thursday, May 8. 2008
In the news

DMC imagery taken today by the UK-DMC satellite of Burma (Myanmar) shows the

Burma cyclone image
Rangoon (Yangon) area and flooded southern coastal regions. DMC imagery acquired of the region is being supplied to project managers of the International Charter "Space and Major Disasters" to be processed into information products that determine flood extents. DMCii has also supplied pre-disaster archive imagery to enable comparisons with post-disaster imagery for the production of emergency maps.

You can also find Burma cyclone images on the UNOSAT website.

Posted by Robin Wolstenholme in In the news, Multimedia at 13:21 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)
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