IAC#4 - Team Kingston

It's not just Kingston staff and alumni who are here at the IAC, students are too. At the registration desk I found Paul Stevens with Pejman Neghadi (both MEng Astro Year 3) nearby. Paul has joined the congress staff to help with the cost of attending, while Pejman is helping man the UKSEDS stand (he is the UKSEDS Treasurer, so I suppose he is making sure that their funds are spent wisely...).

IAC#3 - Two approaches to space tourism

Both EADS Astrium and Virgin Galactic have models of their proposed vehicles on display in the exhibition hall, demonstrating differernt approaches. Astrium (top) proposes an all-in-one rocketplane while Virgin (bottom) will use a two-stage vehicle - an aircraft carries the smaller rocket to its launch altitude.

Given that Virgin (with Scaled Composites) are actually developing flight hardware and have rolled out the carrier aircraft, I know which I expect to see in space first!

IAC#2 - Team Kingston

There are fair few Kingston people attending the IAC, a well as Barnaby and myself. Here are some of them.

First up is Kingston alum Abdul Ismail. After working in the USA for a NASA subcontractor after graduation and attending the ISU Master's programme in Strasbourg, France Abdul set up his own company and now splits his time between the Europe , the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia (just behind him you can see EADS Astrium's rover testbed "Bridget").

Another Kingston alum is Flis Holland (former chair of both KUSEDS and UKSEDS) who, supported by the Arts Catalyst has organised Less Remote at the IAC, a symposium about the future of space exploration from the the arts and humanities perspective which has attracted a wide range of international participants.

IAC#1 - The Space Armadillo

The International Astronautical Congress (IAC) is the world's biggest astronautics and space engineering conference. Each year it is held in a different location around the world. The 2008 IAC year is being held in the UK (for the first time in 20 year) in Glasgow. More than 2000+ attendees are present to hear of the latest developments in the space world and attend the exhibition. Amongst the 2000 are staff, students and alumni from Kingston.

The most notable feature of the site is the main auditorium, known locally as The Armadillo (top left) where we had the opening ceremony (left) on Monday morning. After that, the exhibition (more later) opened and the technical sessions started. In the evening the Welcome Reception took place just across the river in the Glasgow Science Centre and culminated with fireworks!

Space jobs in Sweden

Kingston Astro alumnus Erik Clacey (Class of 2005) is now working as a Spacecraft Engineer for the Swedish Space Corporation (SSC). He writes to say,

"We here at SSC are growing faster than we can find qualified and enthusiastic people to work here so I was wondering if maybe you know of some graduates who have excelled, preferably some experience but not always necessary, are looking for employment and are willing to work at SSC in sweden?

There are some postings online at www.ssc.se but there is also a need for people in similar fields, too, for example mechanical engineer (designing in CAD, FEM analysis, structure), software engineers, as well as system engineers. We are building up our electric propulsion department and may need some more people there. The same goes for our "green" propellant group, ECAPS."

China launches third manned space mission

China launched its third manned space flight today, carrying three astronauts on a 68-hour mission that will include the nation's first ever space walk, state TV reported.

The Shenzhou VII spacecraft lifted off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China in the presence of President Hu Jintao and other senior leaders.

The head of the three-man crew, 41-year-old Zhai Zhigang, is scheduled to carry out a 30-minute space walk either Friday or more likely Saturday, earlier reports said.

Source: www.spacedaily.com

New Astro Students Land

The new academic year has kicked off. This week is Induction Week for all our new undergraduate students. Today I got to meet the new astro students on their own for the first time and started to get to know them. They are a good group with an impressive range of skills and abilities. I look forward to seeing them develop into fully-fledged space engineers over the next few years. The only way is up!

Call for Proposals for Sounding Rocket and Balloon Flights

A BEXUS balloon is inflated prior to flight

10 September 2008
The ESA Education Office has today issued a call for proposals for student experiments to be flown on two REXUS sounding rockets and two BEXUS stratospheric balloons.
 
Selected student teams will have the opportunity to design and build an experiment suitable for a flight on the BEXUS 8 and 9 balloons that will be launched in October 2009, or the REXUS 7 and 8 sounding rockets, to be launched in March 2010. All flights will take place from Kiruna in Northern Sweden. 

Each flight will carry a payload consisting solely of student experiments. Half the payload is available to German students through a DLR Announcement of Opportunity and the other half is made available to students from all other ESA Member States and Co-operating States* by the Swedish National Space Board (SNSB) through a collaboration with ESA. 

	A REXUS rocket is launched from Esrange in Kiruna, Sweden

Applications and Selection
 
The deadline for applications is 17 November 2008. More information can be found athttp://www.rexusbexus.net and applications should be submitted at http://joinspace.org. The flight opportunity is open to students aged between 18 and 28 at the time of the application deadline. Applicants must be enrolled as a full-time undergraduate or PhD student in a university located in an ESA Member State or Co-operating State*. They must also be studying or researching a subject in a relevant field of science or engineering. (N.B. German students should apply to the parallel DLR call for proposals.) 

The best 12-15 team proposals will be shortlisted and announced on19 December 2008. The shortlisted teams will then be invited to a workshop at ESTEC during the first week of February 2009 to present their proposals to experts from ESA and Esrange. The final selection will be made by the team of experts, immediately after the workshop. 

The selected teams will be invited to a training week in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany at the end of March 2009. A preliminary design review of each experiment will be carried out during this week by experts from Esrange. Students will be expected to build their experiments during the summer of 2009 (in the case of BEXUS) and up to the end of 2009 (in the case of REXUS). 

ESA will sponsor up to four team members from each team to attend the following:

• the selection workshop at ESTEC;
• the training week in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany;
• the flight campaign.

All costs related to the rockets, balloons and launches are covered under the bilateral Agency Agreement between SNSB and DLR regarding the REXUS and BEXUS programmes. Esrange experts will provide technical support in the integration and testing phase, as well as providing campaign management and operations. Students will be responsible for funding the development of the experiments and their shipment to Esrange, in collaboration with their universities or other sponsors. 

SOURCE: ESA

See Doomed Spacecraft Before Its Fiery Demise

Written by Nancy Atkinson

ATV. credit: ESA

The Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) has done its duty – it even went above and beyond its expected capabilities. But the end is nigh, and soon, on September 29 the ATV will become a fireball and burn up in theEarth's atmosphere, never to be seen again. But before it does, people in North America and Europe have the perfect opportunity to see it sail overhead this weekend in its low Earth orbit, and according toSpaceweather.com, the ATV will glow about a brightly as the North Star, Polaris. To find out when and where to look for the ATV in the evening or early morning skies, check out Spaceweather.com's great satellite tracking webpage. Just plug in your zip code and you'll be able to get tracking information for all the satellites that will be visible for the next few days. Also, Heavens Above is a great site to find tracking information, as well. So get out there and bid Jules Verne adieu. Here's some of the great things the ATV accomplished while on orbit at the ISS, and a movie of its undocking too…

The Jules Verne spent five months docked to the space station where it delivered supplies (and fun things like a manuscript written by its namesake.) The supply ship turned into a tug boat when its engines were fired up to help the ISS avoid a piece of space junk. It also served as an impromptu bedroom for the space station crew.

When will the next ATV fly? Sometime in 2010, and the name for that ship has not yet been revealed. It will follow the debut of another space station cargo ship, Japan's H-2A Transfer Vehicle, set for next year.

Here's a movie of the Jules Verne undocking from the ISS.

Source: Spaceweather.com, universetoday

Hubble NICMOS Instrument Experiences Anomaly

Written by Nancy Atkinson

NICMOS

A cooling system for the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) science instrument aboard the Hubble telescopeexperienced an anomaly during a restart, causing the instrument to go into safe mode. After a couple of additional restarts, the problem still persists, and a decision was made for NICMOS to "stand down" while engineers study the anomaly and allow the cooling system to warm up, which may take a couple of weeks. In the short term, this will affect planned science observations, and engineers are hoping to avoid any long term complications. At this point, if the problem cannot be fixed from the ground, it is unclear how it might affect the upcoming servicing mission, scheduled for an Oct. 10 launch.

New software was uploaded last week to the computer that controls Hubble's five science instruments to get the telescope ready for the upcoming servicing mission (SM4). Installation of the software requires putting all of the telescope's science instruments into safe mode configuration for a short period of time.

About six hours after the system was reactivated, at about 4 a.m. EDT on Sept. 11, the NICMOS anomaly was seen. The cooling system put itself into safe mode after seeing too high a speed in the circulator pump operation. After studying data, flight controllers modified operating protection parameters and attempted a restart of the system on Sunday, Sept. 14. The circulator system again indicated a high speed violation so the system was returned to safe mode.

Engineers believe the ice particles in the cooling loop could be causing the problem. With some small adjustments in start-up procedures, engineers think the cooling system can be successfully reactivated. The flight team tried another restart Monday evening (9/15). The anomaly was still seen after that restart, so the Hubble Project's plan now is to stand down from any additional attempts to restart. Engineers will study the anomaly while waiting until the cooling system has been allowed to warm somewhat, which may take several weeks.

The impact to planned NICMOS science operations involves approximately 70 exposures from three guest observer programs and additional exposures from two NICMOS internal calibration programs. Additionally, all NICMOS science has been removed from this week’s observation schedule. Sixty-one orbits of NICMOS science were scheduled for the week between September 15 and September 21.

The servicing mission already has a jam-packed schedule, and its uncertain if any last minute additions to the mission would be possible.

Source: NASA, Universe Today

Welcome to the Blog

Hello readers!

This blog is intended for the Kingston University students enrolled in the Astronautics and space engineering course.  You can expect to see:

• Space news articles, 
  
• Hints, tips and advice on the course modules, 
  
• Reports on what we are doing and 
  
• Links to useful/interesting sites

Comments on any of the posts are more than welcome, but requests for exam results (before the exam) will not be indulged!

More to come shortly!

Regards,

Dr Barnaby Osborne