Surrey Space Centre
Welcome to the Surrey Space Centreweb site, the home of small spacecraft. Surrey Space Centre (SSC) is a fully integrated mix of world class academic research teams whose aim is to underpin the technical development of the small space industry; and the commercial activities of Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) with a global reputation for the design, build and launch of low cost, multi-purpose satellites. Through these pages you will find details of the multidisciplinary research of the academic centre; courses taught within the University; Know-How transfer programmes and details of the achievements of the centre.
News Highlights:
New Recruitments
1st January 2011The SSC is recruiting one new postdoc positions on intelligent and autonomous systems within the AI and Autonomy Research Group.
SSC - Changing the World
Dr. Craig Underwood presented the research of the Surrey Space Centre and SSTL at the Changing Worlds exhibition in Parliament Square as part of a day celebrating the impact of research of the SETSquared partnership of Universities of Bath, Bristol, Southampton and Surrey. SSC also had an exhibition which was manned by Dr Chris Bridges. Thanks to Dave Fishlock for transporting the exhibition materials.
SSTL's TechDemoSat-1 to demonstrate UK innovation in space
18th October 2010
Small satellite pioneer Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) has today been awarded a grant to commence the design phase of a national technology demonstration satellite called TechDemoSat-1. The UK's Technology Strategy Board and the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) have together provided a grant of £770,000 to fund the core mission design elements. SSTL, UK industry and UK academia will fund the novel payload technologies and the grant will enable the final payload selection process to be completed. Following a successful design phase, a further grant of £2,730,000 will be released and that the programme will transition into the build and test phase.
National Space Workshop
6th September 2010Professor Sir Martin Sweeting, Director of the Surrey Space Centre, led a National Space Technology Road mapping workshop here at the University on 6 September.
2000 Marshall Scholar Major Olivia Elliott
10th June 2010Olivia attended the University of Surrey in 2000 and graduated with an MPhil in Microsatellite Design & Control.
Surrey Space Centre presence at the Farnborough International Airshow 2010.
9th June 2010The Surrey Space Centre will have a stand at the Farnborough International Airshow from 19/7 - 25/7. We are in hall 3, position SZ10, very near to the ESA, Astrium and UK Space Agency stands. If you're visiting, don't hesitate to drop by!
Professor Sir Martin Sweeting and Dr Yang Gao on BBC News.
6th June 2010Professor Sir Martin Sweeting is a man on a mission. He wants to build a probe that will, quite literally, take a shot at the Moon.
Career development at Surrey Space Centre
6th June 2010European Parliament TV interviewed Sir Martin and Chris about the links between industry and academia at Surrey: in EuroparlTV and following debate.
SSC Welcomes the Formation of the UK Space Agency
23rd March 2010Dr Craig Underwood, Deputy Director of the Surrey Space Centre, responds to the formation of the UK Space Agency:
"As the UK's largest space engineering academic training and research centre, the Surrey Space Centre welcomes the formation of a UK Space Agency. As the Space Innovation and Growth Strategy has outlined - space technology and its exploitation are key to many aspects modern life, and is an area where the UK has developed unique capabilities - particularly in the fields of Earth observation, monitoring and responding to climate change and, for example, in the area of advanced small satellites - as pioneered here at Surrey."
Dr Pechev Wins Entrepreneur Award
11th March 2010
SSC Lecturer Dr Alexandre Pechev has been awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering's ERA Foundation Entrepreneurs Award 2010. As a result of Alexandre's research into the control of satellites it is now possible to have for the first-time, truly interactive, real-time, full body animation of many characters and different user generated creatures in a computer game.
Alexandre was presented with his award at the Game Developers Conference in California where he is currently showcasing his IKinema technology.
Happy Birthday UoSAT-2 .... 26 years old today
1st March 2010
Built in just 6 months from scratch and launched from Vandenberg AFB on a Delta with Landsat-D on 1 March 1984, UoSAT-2 (UO-11) was still transmitting last week on 145.825 MHz AFSK-FM at 1200 bps after 26 years in orbit! The on-board batteries are exhausted, so the satellite now only operates in sunlight and has inactive beacons at 435.025 MHz and 2401MHz.
UoSAT-2 carried a Digitalker speech synthesiser and experiments including magnetometers, a CCD camera, a Geiger-Muller tube and a microphone to detect micrometeoroid impacts. The satellite was instrumental in providing a communications link from the Canadian-Soviet Ski-Trek support teams to the expedition party in 1986. The position of the skiers' emergency beacon was calculated daily by Cospas-Sarsat ground stations and relayed to them, and thousands of amateur radio listeners, as a spoken message (hear it here) from the Digitalker on board UO-11. The message could also serve as an emergency channel to the skiers in the event that all other radio links failed.
UoSAT-2 also carried the Digital Communications Experiment (DCE) that was the first digital packet store-&-forward payload on a microsatellite and you can find more details here
Dr Craig Underwood Gives Lecture to CalTech
24th February 2010
On Tuesday 23rd February 12 noon California time, 9pm UK time, Dr Craig Underwood gave a 1 hour lecture to class of 25 Aerospace students and JPL staff at GALCIT, California Institute of Technology (CalTech), Passedena, US, using internet technology. Through the latest internet video conferencing, Craig was able to deliver a lecture on the principles of Small Satellite Design, and present initial spacecraft bus design concepts for the "Autonomous Assembly of a Reconfigurable Space Telescope (ARReST)" mission concept being jointly developed by SSC, CalTech and NASA/JPL. This is the first time that SSC has delivered a lecture by remote presence via the internet. The technology proved robust, and the lecture was very well received. Follow-up lectures will be delivered as the project progresses.
The AAReST mission is based around spacecraft bus technology derived from Surrey's SNAP nano-satellite programme, lead by Craig, and SSC's CubeSat research, lead by Dr Vaios Lappas and Dr Tanya Vladimirova. The telescope payload is being developed by CalTech and NASA/JPL, and comprises a main mirror telescope, with six "satellite" mirrors - know as mirrorcraft. The mirrorcraft will be able to undock and re-dock autonomously to change the configuration of the telescope to allow various astronomical and Earth observation optical experiments to be carried out. If supported, the mission could be ready to fly in 2012/2013. The mission provides a challenge requiring a great advance in small satellite technology, and SSC is uniquely placed to deliver this, with its advanced research in astrodynamics, micro-propulsion, avionics and inter-satellite link technology.
Prof. Sir Martin Sweeting Receives IET Faraday Medal
2nd December 2009Professor Sir Martin Sweeting has been awarded the Institution of Engineering and Technology's (IET) most prestigious award, the Faraday Medal in recognition of "his visionary leadership, satellite expertise, ambition and drive, which among other things, brought the overheads involved in space exploration, down to earth."
Further details are available in the IET's press release.
SSC Tests Martian Rovers
30th September 2009
Dr Minh-Tri Pham and Ms Karin Shala from SSC's Autonomy & AI Research Group recently took part in a test of the Bridget Martian rover prototype in a quarry near to Stevenage, UK. Karin and Minh-Tri were working as part of the EU FP7's PRoVisG project and towards their own PhD and Postdoc research under supervision of Dr Yang Gao. The quarry was chosen for its similarity to Martian terrain. The field trials were completed successfully with a new set of images that will support the future work in both projects.
SSC Lecturer Invited to Teach at COSPAR Summer School
28th Sept 2009
Dr Yang Gao of SSC (3rd from right in the photo) was one of the nine invited lecturers at the COSPAR organized summer school on Lunar and Planetary Surface Science in Harbin, China on 6th-19th September 2009. This summer school covers topics on design of instruments for measuring surface and subsurface properties and how to evaluate the data, design of planetary robotic tools with emphasis on lunar applications, various mission design and spacecraft navigation techniques. The program also included workshops to discuss instrument design and data collected from new missions such as Phoenix, Rosetta, Chang’E 1 and Chandrayaan-1. Details about the workshop can be found at http://astro.hit.edu.cn/cospar2009workshop/programme.html
SSC Researcher becomes ESA Astronaut
20th May 2009Dr Andreas Mogensen has been appointed as one of the next intake of European Space Agency (ESA) astronauts. Andreas is currently researching the guidance and control of spacecraft during the terminal descent phase of planetary landings at the Surrey Space Centre. He was one of only six people selected from an initial 8413 applicants. Further details are available on ESA's Human Spaceflight pages.
