SSTL & DMCii are scheduled to be featured on the Discovery Channel’s "How Do They Do It?" television programme. Tune in to either Discovery Channel or Discovery HD at 20:00 on Thursday 27th August (Updated).

If you are not one of the 1.2 billion who already watch the program, "How Do They Do It?" showcases a wide variety of technology and inventions from around the world from the cutting-edge to the well established, telling the story behind the technology and essentially explaining how things work.

The SSTL/DMCii section is entitled “How do they make the satellites that provide pixel perfect pictures of the earth from deep space?”, which seems partucularly timely, considering the SSTL built UK-DMC2 and Deimos-1 satellites have just been launched and are supplying their first satellite images to DMCii as this blog is published.

For those readers outside the UK, the program will be followed by a US version on the Science Channel in early September. Space Blog will keep readers up to date nearer the time, with details where possible.

If you're reading Space Blog then there's a good chance you're going to be interested in joining some lively debate about the new race for the Moon. Nick Campbell, Managing Editor of Nature magazine will host Nature's evening debate "Racing to the Moon" in King's Place, London on the 11th May.

The discussion will be chaired by BBC News Science Correspondent Christine McGourty.

Four decades after the first Moon landings, the original space-racers have been joined by China, India, South Korea, even Nigeria. Why do we still need manned missions? Does space exploration need countries to cooperate, or does it benefit from the oxygen of international conflict and mistrust?

Sir Martin Sweeting will speak as the Director of the Surrey Space Centre and chairman of Surrey Satellite Technology Limited. SSTL was founded at a time when the satellite business was a duopoly between NASA and the Soviet Union and experienced - and influenced - the seismic changes within the industry. During this time his original staff of four has since grown to 300. He says that the new space-rush can be compared to the gold rush in 1880s America.

Only last year SSTL's onboard computer (OBC) was spurred into action to control the Mini-SAR onboard the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter in the search for water-ice on the Moon.

The MoonLITE and MoonRAKER concepts are also under development in a British consortium that includes SSTL and other UK space companies and research facilities.

What has focussed the "gold rush" in space more than the race to the Moon? If this sounds like old news to you, then Space Blog would like to point you towards London for this event to find out about the new race for the Moon that is fast building speed. This is the first of two King's Place summer events organized by the weekly science journal Nature - you can find out more from this link.

Alsat-1, the first SSTL satellite of the Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC) and the catalyst of Algeria’s fledgling space programme, remains healthy and fully operational after its sixth year in orbit.

Now, having exceeded its original 5 year schedule, Alsat-1 is more than 12 months into extended mission. The satellite engineers say that this remarkable extension was mainly accomplished through careful battery management.

Alsat-1 was not only the first DMC satellite, but also the first spacecraft to carry a Line Scan Imager. As such, SSTL is particularly delighted about this recent achievement. Its tasks have included responding to forest fires in Algeria and contributing to worldwide disaster response under the International Charter: Space and Major Disasters.

The Earth-Observation (EO) satellite is still providing imagery to the Algerian CNTS team (Centre National des Techniques Spatiales of Algeria) on a regular basis, although at a reduced capacity in order to further extend the battery life.

Alsat-1 carries an optical imaging payload developed by SSTL to provide 32m ground resolution with an exceptionally wide swath width of over 640 km allowing it to image an unparalleled area in each pass. CNTS is distributing the data to other Algerian institutions, which are using it for pollution monitoring, cartography and petrology applications.

For those who were not able to attend the Space Experiment Competition award ceremony during the IAC in Glasgow last week, the International Astronatical Federation (IAF) has posted a video recording on their IAC 2008 web page.

Altenatively, use the video player below to tune in to Rex Hall (BIS), Ian Gibson (BNSC), Soyeon Yi (Korean Astronaut), Sir Martin Sweeting (SSTL), Stuart Eves (SSTL), Dr June Scobee Rodgers (writer and educator) and last but not least the students who took part below!



Sir Martin discusses his personal support and commitment to getting youngsters interested in space, having sparked his interest in space through amateur radio activities.

Dr. Ian Gibson, BNSC highlights the importance of space to the UK in 3 words: economy, challenge, understanding.

See Shrewsbury school's moment of triumph around 33 minutes in.