The team have already started work on the next stage of the project: the Preliminary Design Review, which will be submitted in February.  Again, representatives will need to travel to present our work, this time to the launch site in northern Sweden.

If you are interested in find out more about the project you can check the UKSEDS Project page or the PoleCATS team website.

To follow the team’s progress why not follow us on Twitter or like our new Facebook page?

We will continue to display a copy of the constitution on the  Constitution Page for reference.

Thank you for voting.

The Committee

Students selected by ESA’s Education Office will be reimbursed their conference registration fee and up to a maximum of €300 in travel and accommodation expenses. Sponsorship will be in the form of a single reimbursement after the conference.

Before applying students must visit the conferences page of the ESA Education Portal (www.esa.int/education > Conferences) and:

• Check their eligibility for the programme under the “Sponsorship Conditions” link.
• Familiarize themselves with the content of the “How to Apply” link.

To apply, please visit ESA Education registration system: www.joinspace.org.  The deadline for sponsorship applications is January 4th 2012.

The deadline for submitting abstracts is postponed to 11 Nov 2011 for students only. Student who submitted abstracts before can also apply for ESA sponsorship.

Check http://www.vki.ac.be/CubeSatSymposium/ for details.

(Source: Cem O. Asma, PhD, von Karman Institute, via email)

This facility is one of the most sophisticated and high-quality research centres of its kind in Europe and boasts a 146 m high tower that provides experiments with up to 9.3 s of microgravity.

The deadline to submit the experiment proposals is 13 February 2012.  The selected team will perform its experiment during ESA’s fourth Drop your Thesis! campaign, to be held during the Autumn of 2012.

All the information for this programme can be found at http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Education/SEMFNY6UXSG_0.html.  For any further information, please do no hesitate to contact us through the e-mail dropyourthesis@esa.int.

(Sources: Dr Javier Ventura-Traveset, ESA, via email; ESA Education News)

If you’re not aware, this year’s UKSEDS workshop will be held at Imperial College London on Saturday the 19^th of November. This is an all day event which is FREE for all to attend.

This all day event will run from 9am to 6:30pm with not one, not even two, but THREE workshop sessions where you’ll get the chance to learn how to run your own high altitude balloon missions, plan and operate space missions and attend an electronics workshops with MBed. A full time table can be found here.
If that wasn’t enough we’re also throwing in a guest talk by Dr Ian Crawford on “The Scientific Case for renewed Robotic and Human Exploration of the Moon”

Registration is now open, please email workshop@ukseds.org to book a place by Monday the 14th of November.

Please note: If you do not book, you will not receive a guest wifi accounts at imperial.

Also please feel free to download the workshop poster from the website to help us advertise the event at your establishment.

Looking forward to seeing you all there, just remember to bring a laptop, stationary, a packed lunch and plenty of ideas and enthusiasm!

Gradcracker is the UK’s careers website for engineering and technology students.

Students can find the latest opportunities relevant to their degree discipline and can search for graduate programmes, jobs and work placements.

Gradcracker is an advertising platform for the employers and a careers resource for our students – it has no involvement in directly providing employers with candidates. Employers pay to advertise on gradcracker.com and all the student services we provide are free. Gradcracker is not a recruitment agency and therefore does not charge employers to employ students.

UKSEDS now has its own page on Gradcracker.  Getting a job in this day and age is proving to be quite difficult, I should know, being a living example of that! By registering with Gradcracker, not only does this allow relevant companies to contact and network with you, it will also directly aid UKSEDS run projects as GRADCRACKER WILL PROVIDE FUNDING BASED ON THE NUMBERS OF MEMBERS WE HAVE.

So please go and sign up, it only takes 1 minute and they won’t endlessly spam your inbox into submission.

SIGN UP HERE

The University of Bristol’s very own UKSEDS branch, CHAOS Astrium, launched it’s maiden project last week to collect Upper tropospheric dust particles, via High Altitude weather balloon as well testing the standard atmosphere model and taking some tourist snaps. Using an old goods box salvaged from a local Chinese take away, a spare digital camera, a couple of hand warmers, a free MBed from the nice people at MBed, lots of gaffa tape, a man named Steve and generous funding from the Aerosol society and the Royal Meteorological society, not to mention NEXUS we were able to send our payload to 20,000 feet. Construction, coding and testing completed by within 2 months and was successfully launched from EARS near Cambridge on August the 13th. Despite fears it would end up in the North sea the payload was successfully recovered in a field south of Norwich having travelled 60 miles with all the important scientific equipment. Dramatic photos, vital data and the ice nucleation particles from the upper atmosphere were recovered and are awaiting further analysis to be published this autumn. The successful team helped themselves to cake as a reward! More info to come.

We urgently need some volunteers to help the committee so that we can get on with all the cool projects that people have been suggesting. There are two ways you could help:

a) Become a co-opted committee member: We need some new committee members to replace those who can no longer commit their time. We can co-opt new members who will attend the fortnightly Skype meetings and take part in the day to day running of UKSEDS. There will also be opportunities to get involved in various projects/events etc. We need people who can commit to attending the regular meetings and put in several hours of work a week through to the next AGM.

b) Ad hoc help: If you would like to help but don’t want a long term commitment then there are lots of other ways you can get involved e.g. creating newsletters, updating the website, producing membership packs, doing a stint on stands at events, etc.

If you would like to volunteer in any capacity please email the committee.

Week: 6 June – 12 June

FRIDAY, 10 June, 16:30-18:00, “Pluto and the Outer Solar System”, lecture by Dr Mike Leggett from the British Interplanetary Society (Venue: CSA Lounge, Cranfield University), please download the poster PlutoAndOuterSolarSystem (1)
Week: 13 June – 19 June

WEDNESDAY, 15 June, 19:00-20:30, CranSEDS trip to visit British Interplanetary Society and attend the “Plasma Universe” talk by Dr Melanie Windridge (Venue: BIS, 27-29 South Lambeth Road, Vauxhall, London, SW8 1SZ). Not really a CranSEDS specific event, but many of us are going and we encourage you to go too, maybe we can meet up there!

Week: 20 June – 26 June

FRIDAY, 24 June, 14:00-15:00, “Mars and Entrepreneurs”  talk by Josep Virgili Llop (fellow Cranfield student in MSc Astronautics and Space Engineering) (Venue: CSA Lounge, Cranfield University)

Also, remember to check up on the progress of the human mission to Mars at http://www.crimsonaut.com/

More information will be posted on the CranSEDS website: http://cranseds.org.uk/