It’s 2020, the year by which we were promised so much. By the likes of me. So, what will 2020 actually bring for the space sector? — Let’s start by looking back. In 1997, the Futurists Peter Schwartz & Peter Leyden predicted in Wired that humans would land on Mars in the year 2020. They won’t. It always an optimistic prediction, and I’d suggest its only marginally more likely today that humans will go to Mars within…

The 31st UKSEDS National Student Space Conference was held in Edinburgh on 2 & 3 March 2019, the first time it had visited Scotland, and to open the conference I gave a State of the Nation keynote on the status of the Scottish space sector. This article extends on what I said to examine the challenge of actually achieving the Scottish government supported growth targets for the sector. — So what is the state of the nation’s space sector? Well, the conference was sold-out. So that’s a good start!

24 & 25 January…it’s all about the service, the product, the data. — As engineers we often forget that the only purpose of our spacecraft is to give the payload the environment it needs. To keep it warm, to keep it cold, to protect it from the space environment. To point it in the correct direction, and hold it stable and safe. To…

The successful landing of China’s Chang’e-4 robotic spacecraft on the far side of the Moon, and the return of those stunning images is an indisputable engineering success. China achieved this first, for humanity. — That other nations have chosen to not do this should not diminish China’s achievement. But equally, it shouldn’t diminish the achievements of other. Whilst China was landing on the moon, NASA was conducting humanity’s most distant ever exploration, with New Horizons at the snowman shaped Ultima Thule. At the same…

The below blog article was first posted on 8 August 2017 at this page on the UK Space Agency website. For completeness I am adding it here. When asked to describe myself, I tend to say I am a professional space technology engineer, working in academia. I’ve worked in the…

On 12 April 1961 Major Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth. Since then a further 532 people have done so. This week…

Space: Obstacles and Opportunities Applications of space data and technology today spread far beyond traditional users and operators in sectors such as national security and telecommunications, with space having a transformational impact on sectors as diverse as forestry, agriculture and the financial markets. …

Towards an Informed and Risk-Based Framework of Space Regulation and Debris Space debris has made the headlines again recently with the crew of the International Space Station sheltering in the docked Soyuz vehicle as a fragment from a now-defunct Russian weather satellite (International Designator 1979–095AD) passed at around three kilometres distance on 16 July. …