DLR at the ILA 2012 Berlin - Image

At the International Aerospace Exhibition (Internationale Luft- und Raumfahrtausstellung; ILA) 2012 in Berlin, the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft und- Raumfahrt; DLR) will be displaying their research in the aerospace sector with more than 70 exhibits at the DLR stand (Hall 4), the Space Pavilion, the open-air area and the static display.

Credit: DLR

First Scottish-built satellite UKube-1 to launch in 2013

One of the first satellite to be built in Scotland, by Clyde Space, is due to be launched next year.

UKube-1 is being built at the West of Scotland Science Park in Maryhill, Glasgow.

The United Kingdom Universal Bus Experiment, to give it its proper name, is a pilot programme from the UK Space Agency to test new technologies in space.

The underlying CubeSat concept came originally from America: to create a satellite 10cm by 10cm by 10cm.

That gives you a volume of just one litre, but that can contain a surprising amount of science in low Earth orbit.

It's a package which costs, by space exploration standards, relatively little to build and launch.

Several Scottish firms supply intellectual property to the space industry. One of them, Clyde Space, has a big presence in the CubeSat sector.

More than 600 CubeSats have been launched so far and the Glasgow firm has made components for 40% of them.

They have customers worldwide and - if your credit card can take the strain - you can order the innards of your very own satellite from their online CubeSat shop.

'Different possibilities'

They make components for other types of satellites too but their chief executive, Craig Clark, says he's seen the CubeSat concept expand far beyond its initial concept.

People often ask me what my job is and I tell them that I'm building satellites in Maryhill. Sometimes they laugh at me” Steven Kirk Clyde Space.

"A typical CubeSat mission was a student-built satellite that would maybe go beep or try something out that didn't cost a lot of money," he says.

"But now it's serving a need, maybe for more communications or images from space. If you can think of an application, there's a way of fitting it in a CubeSat. It really opens the mind to lots of different possibilities."

Those possibilities include CubeSats which aren't cubes: the basic modules can be stacked to produce double or triple decker designs.

UKube-1 is a three-cube platform. Three litres of orbital science overseen by the UK Space Agency.

It will be the first complete satellite to be assembled by Clyde Space.

Project manager Gillian Smith's job is to co-ordinate the company's own contributions to the satellite: power systems, solar panels and other hardware."But we're also managing the payload teams," she says.

"We've got four different payloads from different universities and organisations which will be on UKube-1."

National security expert warns of Asian space race

James Clay Moltz, an associate professor in the department of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, has published a commentary paper in the journal Nature where he warns of a possible space race involving many Asian nations, possibly leading to an arms race. 

 
Moltz writes that despite denials by the major Asian players, there exists the beginnings of a space race among the most technologically advanced countries in the area.

In the lead of course is China, which besides the United States and Russia, is the only country to have put a person in space on its own.


Other Asian countries actively involved in space technology include India, South Korea and Japan, though others such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan are working on building a presence as well.

Japan of course, has been actively involved with the International Space station, and India has been putting nerves on edge by mixing its space technology with military goals by building rockets capable of carrying a payload all the way to Beijing.

The country has also launched its own rockets into space to deliver satellites, though it’s not yet achieved the broad range of successes of the Chinese program.

The problem with an Asian space race, Moltz contends, is that it builds an arena of unhealthy competition bred out of historic geopolitical rivalries.

It also wastes resources, but that’s not something that should concern other countries. What should he writes, is the possibility of an Asian space race morphing into an Asian arms race, something that could impact virtually every nation on Earth.

The current situation, he explains, is a collection of Asian countries who are unwilling to work together to meet mutual goals such as can be seen with the European Space Agency (ESA).

Instead, individual countries work independently, quite often duplicating work done by other countries both in Asia and in the west, resulting in secretive programs that have as a goal beating one another to the next level, rather than building programs that serve the national, or international good.

What is perhaps most chilling about an Asian space race is the way China, which is the clear leader, has gone about its space program, highlighted not by its triumphs in manned exploration, but in it’s destruction of one of its dead weather satellites by an anti-satellite weapon back in 2007.


Not only did that action contribute to the vast collection of space junk, but it sent shock waves through the entire international community as it demonstrated very clearly the types of technology China has been secretly working on. And because of its leadership role in the Asian community, the action has likely set other countries to develop their own such weapons.

One other worrisome offshoot of the space race is the impact it might have on those Asian countries unable to join in.

Pakistan, for example, a country with nuclear weapons, has voiced concerns over the missile technology that India has developed and has repeatedly made it clear that any actions by India it deems a threat to its own survival would be met with all out war, including the use of nuclear bombs.

More information: Technology: Asia's space race, Nature 480, 171–173 (08 December 2011) doi:10.1038/480171a

UK Space Community benefits from £4.75m in Infrastructure Investment

The UK Space Agency will be channeling the new investment into three cutting-edge projects, including £3 million for a computing infrastructure at the International Space Innovation Centre for processing Earth observation data and making it more accessible for the UK space sector.

The three projects will rely on advances in computing, timing and data-handling to provide added benefits for industry and academia.

Centre for Climate Monitoring and Evaluation from Space (CEMS)
The CEMS at the International Space Innovation Centre will provide multi-sensor processing and a whole range of other tools and facilities for access, manipulation, visualisation and exploitation of data at realistic costs for companies (including SMEs).

UK Gaia Mission Data Processing and Analysis Centre (DPAC)
The University of Cambridge is receiving £0.75 million for a high performance computing system for the UK facility that will process the data from Gaia – Europe’s mission to examine the Milky Way in unprecedented 3-D detail.

The new computing system for the DPAC will support the effective use of mission data across the UK and beyond, including high bandwidth links to the data visualisation facilities at ISIC, Harwell.

Acquire and Exploit the Highest Quality Timing Data from Space (ACES)
Subject to approval by ESA and its Member States, £1M will be used to install a space-to-ground link from the planned ACES atomic clock system aboard the International Space Station to the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, thus allowing an ultra-precision space-based timing signal to be made available to the UK's leading centre of metrology.

The funding will also allow specialised hardware to be provided to distribute the signal to key research and application development users in the UK.

The new funding for these projects is part of the Government’s multi-million pound e-infrastructure investment to provide UK scientists and businesses with access to the most sophisticated technology, keeping them at the cutting-edge of research and development. Minister for Universities and Science David Willetts said:

“We should not think of infrastructure as just roads and railways – it’s also the networks and systems that underpin our world-leading science and research base.

This ambitious and forward-looking programme of investment will be vital for businesses and universities alike. It will improve research and manufacturing processes and reduce the time and money it takes to bring a product to market.

“This will drive growth and innovation across a whole range of sectors and ensure our leading institutions and companies are able to exploit the very latest technology.”

DEXTRE: Canadian Robot Repairs Components on ISS

Canadian built Dextre was designed to reduce the need for astronauts to conduct spacewalks for routine maintenance, therefore freeing up the crew's time for more important activities, like conducting science.

Dextre, the Canadian Space Agency's robotic handyman aboard the International Space Station (ISS), has successfully replaced a faulty circuit-breaker box on the orbiting lab.

The robot swapped the failed component for a fresh one, thereby restoring part of the orbiting lab's backup electrical systems. The maneuver marks the first time Dextre replaces defective equipment on the Station.

Known by the technical term "Remote Power Control Modules," (RPCMs)," circuit-breaker boxes control the flow of electricity through the ISS's secondary power distribution system, and tend to fail occasionally. Up to now, exchanging the boxes was done by spacewalkers, which always carries a certain level of risk.

Dextre was designed to reduce the need for astronauts to conduct spacewalks for routine maintenance, therefore freeing up the crew's time for more important activities, like conducting science.

Canadarm2 supported Dextre during the entire operation, which took place on August 28-29. Dextre was operated from the groundbotics flight controllers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, and supported by several teams of engineers both in Houston and at the Canadian Space Agency's headquarters in Saint-Hubert, Quebec.

While the robotic handyman remains on-call for duty if any issues arise, Dextre also has a full list of scheduled tasks. Later this week, the Canadian-built robot will relocate two small storage pallets from their current location the robot's workbench to the Express Logistics Carrier 4 on the ISS.

One of the pallets carries the equipment for the Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM), Dextre's first research and development project to test the technologies and techniques necessary to refuel satellites in flight.

UK Space Agency Funds International Mars Rover

UK Space Agency Funds International Mars Rover

The ExoMars rover is a robotic scientist which will search for evidence of past and present life and study the local Martian environment to understand when and where conditions that could have supported the development of life may have prevailed.

The UK Space Agency is announcing Pounds 10.5M for the development of instruments to search for signs of past or present life on Mars.

The instruments are part of the scientific payload on the ExoMars rover to be launched in 2018 as part of a joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and US space agency NASA. ExoMars is a flagship project in the UK Space Agency's science and exploration programme.

A two-step programme, the adventure begins in 2016 when NASA will launch an ESA-led orbiter to try to understand the origin and distribution of trace gases in the atmosphere of the Red Planet. In particular, it aims to explain why methane - a gas which scientists know should be destroyed in the atmosphere within a few hundred years - seems to be continuously forming at certain places on the planet.

The orbiter will also release an experimental probe which will make a fiery descent into the thin Martian atmosphere and use its on-board rockets to demonstrate Europe's ability to make a controlled landing on another planet.

Then in 2018, NASA will land ESA's ExoMars rover alongside a NASA rover. Thanks to funding from the UK Space Agency, the rover vehicle for ExoMars is being designed and tested by leading UK space company EADS Astrium at its facility in Stevenage, Hertfordshire under a multi-million pound contract.

The ExoMars rover is a robotic scientist which will search for evidence of past and present life and study the local Martian environment to understand when and where conditions that could have supported the development of life may have prevailed.

Unlike previous US rovers, ExoMars will carry a radar able to search beneath it for scientifically promising locations under the surface and a drill to extract samples from 2 m down that will be fed to its on-board laboratory.

The UK is leading on developing two of the nine instruments (the Life Marker Chip and the Panoramic Camera) on the rover and has a major involvement in two other instruments (the Raman Laser Spectrometer and the X-Ray diffactometer).

David Willetts, Universities and Science Minister, said, "The UK's world-leading technology will play a major role in this international ExoMars project.

Our scientists will expand our knowledge of the red planet and help generate applications for these technologies here at home to benefit society and the economy. It's exciting to see UK engineers working on the most ambitious Mars mission ever attempted."

Bolivia Creates Space Agency To Manage Satellite Program

Bolivian President Evo Morales has signed a decree establishing a national space agency to oversee a satellite project scheduled to be completed by 2013, the Latin American Herald Tribune said.
The document, signed by the Bolivian president on Wednesday, stipulates that the Bolivian Space Agency "will promote technology transfer, human-resource development and the application of satellite-communications programs to education, defense, medicine and meteorology."

The new government body will also manage the implementation of the Tupac Katari satellite project, named after the leader of an Indian rebellion against the Spanish colony in the 18th century.

The agency will have an initial budget of $1 million and will be financed through government funding, donations and foreign loans, the Latin American Herald Tribune said, citing the country's Public Works Minister Walter Delgadillo Terceros.

According to the Latin American Herald Tribune, technical experts from China and Bolivia met in January to assess Bolivia's telecommunications capabilities and to start preliminary work on the design of the Tupac Katari, which will be built on the basis of the Chinese DFH-4 satellite.

The first Bolivian satellite is expected to be put into orbit in 2013.

ESA: Slovenia Joins Space Agency

During the coming months, Slovenia will define with ESA the specific areas and projects for cooperation, and the budget for the next five years. Its major participation will be in ESA's Science and Robotic Exploration programme.

Slovenia becomes the sixth European country to sign the European Cooperating State Agreement with ESA.

ESA's Director of Legal Affairs and External Relations, Peter Hulsroj, and Slovenian Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology, Gregor Golobic, signed the agreement at ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands, on 22 January 2010.

This agreement strengthens Slovenia's relations with ESA and defines the legal basis for developing a Plan for European Cooperating State (PECS) Charter, describing activities, projects and budget for Slovenia's cooperation with ESA. Following the signing ceremony, Mr Golobic visited the ESTEC Test Centre and Concurrent Design Facility.

Hungary was the first country to gain this status in April 2003, with Romania, Poland and Estonia also becoming ECS countries. The Czech Republic, now a full Member State, was the second ECS.

The first visit to ESA of a Slovenian delegation was in May 2006, led by Mr Alojz Peterle (former Slovenian Prime Minister and currently Member of European Parliament). Since then, several steps have been made in cooperation between Slovenia and ESA, and the first Cooperation Agreement was signed in May 2008.

ESA participated, through its Earth Observation Directorate, in the 'Bridging the gap' conference in Portoroz, 14-16 May 2008. An ESA expert team visited Slovenian industrial and research organisations involved in space projects in May 2009, notably the Josef Stefan Institute ('bed rest' studies) and EMO Orodjarna, a supplier for the Ariane 5 programme.

During the coming months, Slovenia will define with ESA the specific areas and projects for cooperation, and the budget for the next five years. Its major participation will be in ESA's Science and Robotic Exploration programme.

Slovenia has a longstanding involvement in astronomy and space science. Herman Potocnik (1892-1929) was a Slovene rocket engineer and pioneer of astronautics.

His book, Das Problem der Befahrung des Weltraums - der Raketen-Motor (The Problem of Space Travel - The Rocket Motor) was published in Berlin in 1928. Potocnik devoted himself to rocketry and space science, set out plans for a permanent human presence in space, with detailed plans for a space station and one of the first calculations of a geostationary orbit.

UK Forms a new Space Agency to Promote Space Science Projects

Described in a press release as both “recession-busting” and “bureaucracy-busting”, the new agency will takeover from the British National Space Centre (BNSC).

It will also incorporate six government departments, two councils, the Technology Strategy Board and the Met Office, all of which currently make up the UK’s space efforts.

Science and Innovation Minister Lord Drayson said in a statement: “The new space agency is about making sure that the UK fully exploits its competitive advantage in satellites, robotics and related technologies,“ he added.

The UK space sector has grown three times faster than the overall economy since 1999, racking up a nine per cent increase, and adding £6.5 billion a year to the economy. Some 65,000 people currently work in the sector.

“Our space sector hasn't missed a beat during this recession. This is the classic story of outstanding UK science and entrepreneurship continuing to create jobs and achieve exceptional growth,” he added.