Student space project gathers speed

Science research

It’s been a few months since our blog about the Engineering Education Scheme (EES) The aim of the scheme is to provide students aged 16 and 17 with experience in engineering, science and technology in order to make informed decisions about their future education and career.

The students from Farnborough 6th Form College are investigating ways to detect signals in space that offer a precursor to earthquakes. In this respect, it also has something in common with the POISE space experiment that SSTL helped students to develop on behalf of the British National Space Centre (BNSC).

Rhys Llewellyn and Calum Jones working on the satellite model.


In January, despite the unusually heavy snow the students managed to attend a two day workshop at Surrey University. The team had done some broad research into the field, but still had not decided on which technology(s) would be most appropriate for detecting precursors to earthquakes.

Within the first day, they had decided on a combination of a topside sounder that would measure ion concentration in the ionosphere from above, and an infrared camera which has also shown some promising results for earthquake detection. The rest of the time, the team concentrated on building a half-scale model of a Disaster Monitoring Constellation type spacecraft to be used for display purposes.

SSTL’s David Sanderson has been visiting the team roughly every two weeks after work to provide supervision and mentoring. Their model is now certainly looking the part (see photo above) and the team is preparing their report for assessment and celebrations in April.

This entry was posted by Robin Wolstenholme on Thursday, March 11. 2010 at 14:54. and is filed under Science research. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own blog. All new comments are subject to moderation before being displayed.
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  1. Jhon Peterson says:
    #1 2010-06-03 11:41 (Reply)

    These students are doing very well, if any academy supports students in these types of activities so their confidence is build up & in future they do some new things.

  2. Tom @ Web Design Surrey says:
    #2 2010-06-06 22:05 (Reply)

    If only I'd worked this hard at school, or maybe they didn't make it interesting enough. This project looks awesome!

  3. mike@web design Atlanta says:
    #3 2011-05-05 10:43 (Reply)

    I had also worked on this model when I was in school and it was selected for the state level.The Disaster Monitoring Constellation is a nice thought.


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