This summer, students Charles Cleminson, Teodora Ghiuvea, Calum Jones and Rhys Llewellyn from The Sixth Form College, Farnborough completed a project under the Engineering Education Scheme (EES) in collaboration with SSTL looking at ways to detect signals in space that offer a precursor to earthquakes. Their report was well received by their SSTL and EES mentors, who congratulated them during the award ceremony.

The EES provides students aged 16 and 17 with experience in engineering, science and technology in order to make informed decisions about their future education and career. Working with SSTL, the project aimed to discover a suitable combination of payloads that would successfully identify and monitor the proposed earthquake precursors through regular measurements on a global-scale using a satellite constellation.

According to their very professional end of project paper entitled “A study to examine the feasibility of a constellation of small satellites to detect Earthquake precursor signatures”, up to now we have data only from older missions that are not dedicated to earthquake detection.

The team found that the main failing of previous missions is the lack of continuous measurements, so that statistics could not be built based on data from previous missions. As such, the team proposed, in addition to finding a reliable short term earthquake precursor, their proposed mission should make statistical studies of space-borne precursors of strong earthquakes possible by continuous monitoring. In summary, this data should lead to improved knowledge of the physics behind earthquakes and hopefully save many lives.

The team reviewed a broad range of technologies for detecting earthquakes from correlation with lightning, infra-red emissions, particle precipitation to numerous methods for detecting ionospheric permutations. These were analysed based upon their “prediction capability”, a measure of their ability to answer the three main questions of the short term earthquake prediction: When? Where? How strong?

Their conclusion: that the global monitoring of short term earthquake precursors from space is possible, but that a satellite constellation is necessary if this information is to be used in practice for short-term earthquake prediction.

Aside from the scintillating (no pun intended) discussion of Earthquake detention from space, it was a golden opportunity for the EES scheme team to learn more about space and real world engineering in a commercial environment. SSTL project mentor Dave Sanderson put Space Blog in touch with two of the team members, Rhys and Teodora to talk about their experiences and their future career aspirations.

Continue reading "Education, Earthquakes and Engineering"

SSTL is sponsoring a team of students that have been enrolled in the Engineering Education Scheme (EES) to help solve real and live problems for engineering, applied science and technological companies. The Scheme is set up by the Engineering Development Trust (EDT), with the aim 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.

During the 6 month programme, the students who all currently attend Farnborough 6th Form College, will take on the task set by SSTL to “Investigate possible ways of detecting earthquake precursor signals using satellites, to help us move from disaster monitoring to disaster mitigation”. The project will be mentored by SSTL Radio Frequency team member David Sanderson.

David met with the four budding engineers and their school teacher to give them a tour of the SSTL clean rooms, a presentation on small satellite engineering and introduced them to the project, which will end in April or May with a Celebration and Assessment Day by professional engineers.

The aim of the project is to provide SSTL’s Mission Concepts team with carefully calculated information, including mass, volume and power estimates, for a pre-selected list of sensors. These estimates can then be used to determine the size of the mission required to carry them.

Congratulations to the team from Shrewsbury School who have won the Space Experiment Competition with their proposal for an ionospheric scintillation experiment called POISE. The team beat off competition from 5 other teams of schoolchildren in the UK to develop their experiment with SSTL and fly their entry a small satellite that will be launched by SSTL in 2010.

Shrewsbury School, in Shropshire, beat five other groups from around the UK in the final stage of the competition which was announced at an awards ceremony at the International Astronautical Congress in Glasgow (IAC) today (Friday 3 October).

The competition, launched earlier this year, challenged teams of 14 – 19 year olds to design and build a small, compact satellite instrument. The POISE experiment is expected to measure variations in the ionosphere, which can affect the accuracy and safety of satellite navigation systems, and might also help to provide indications of impending earthquakes.

The POISE team had to overcome significant challenges to design their experiment within the tight constraints of the competition. Their instrument could be no larger than the size of a lunch box, weigh no more than one kilogram and operate on less than one Watt of power.

Ian Pearson, the Minister for Science and Innovation was impressed with the results.

We have some fantastically creative and talented young people in the country. It’s staggering to see the effort and imagination that has been generated by this competition.

The competition has been sponsored by the British National Space Centre (BNSC), a cross-Government organisation that co-ordinates civil space activities in the UK.

Professor Sir Martin Sweeting, founder of SSTL, emphasised the educational potential of the mission:

SSTL was founded by the University of Surrey and we have always had very strong links with academia, so we’re delighted to extend this opportunity to UK schools. I hope that the experiment will encourage more of our young people to take up careers in science and engineering.

Dr David Williams, Director General of BNSC

The UK has a fantastic capability in the space arena and ambitious plans for exciting programmes such as the lunar exploration mission, MoonLITE. We hope this competition will help to inspire the next generation of space scientists who will make those plans a reality.

The judging panel included Professor Colin Pillinger and Keith Mans, the Chief Executive of the Royal Aeronautical Society.

The winning team was announced at IAC by South Korea's first astronaut, Soyeon Yi. She recently returned from a trip to the International Space Station, having been chosen from about 36,000 applicants for the mission.

Competition is hotting up as young students throughout the UK start work on their bid for the BNSC funded Space Experiment competition. The basic idea is to create an experiment that fits into a 10cm X 10 cm X 10 cm box. The student that wins will get expert help from SSTL and an astronomical £100,000 to support their efforts. If that sounds good, here's the best bit

The winning experiment will be flown on-board a real SSTL satellite in space.

Baffled? Cautious? Visit the Space Experiment website and get some ideas flowing.

Initial proposals are due in by the end of February so if you haven't entered already - get your skates on! If you are a parent or teacher and you know students that have a passion for science and technology - get your teenage students involved.

For those of you who missed our Space Experiment blog, here's some more details... and hopefully inspiration.

Why encourage more students to study science and engineering?

There has been a worrying decline in the number of students studying mathematics, science, engineering and technology subjects. The proof is evidenced by a 30% decrease in physics, a 25% decrease in mathematics, and a 19% decrease in chemistry entries at A level between 1991 and 2003. These are some of the most practical and strategically important subjects and could lead to skills gaps in industry, the risks to Britain’s economic success and a threat to Britain’s’ international reputation as a leader in science research. Source: Lord May, President of the Royal Society testimony to the Parliamentary Scientific Committee in May 2004.

School children find science and mathematics dull and difficult and do not see its relevance in their lives. Source; SET for Success Report for Sir Gareth Roberts Review for HM Treasury.

Why space and not something more ...practical?

Britain has a thriving space industry adds £7 billion to the British economy each year and supports 70,000 jobs, not just in the space research institutes and higher profiles but also in the vital high tech engineering companies that supply parts and technologies for use in space.

Space is one of the highest skilled workforces in the Britain and the technologies developed for satellites and missions to other planets can benefit the whole engineering sector, both in terms of available skills and also the creation of new technologies. Some of these technologies are "space-enabled". For example, Britain leads the world in global mobile satellite communications, earth observation, space enabled creative industries and in planetary science.

Space is key to sustainable development and can be used to map sea temperature changes, provide communications in the case of disaster relief and open up new opportunities in healthcare and new energy sources.