Let’s face it, space projects beat pretty much any other kind of project hands down, so having more can only make the world a better place.

On top of being awesome, projects give you the chance to be involved in the design, management, and construction of . You get handy skills, CV experience, and a warm glow of success (assuming your rocket/rover doesn’t explode/attempt to take over the world).

National Projects

We run a number of different projects on a national scale (more details below)  and we’re almost always looking for volunteers, so email projects@ukseds.org if you’re interested and fill out our interest form, here.

Branch Projects

Whether  you want to get involved in a project or start one up, the best way to do it is through one of our university branches, so check them out first. If your uni hasn’t got one, then the national committee can help you out (or you could start your own branch!).

Proposing A Project

If you have an idea for project then get in contact with us and we can help make your idea a reality.

Any UKSEDS member can suggest a project for consideration, just send is a proposal with the following key points (don’t worry if you’re unsure about anything, we’ll help you out).

• What you want to do and why you want to do it
• How you’re going to do, how long it’ll take, and any potential risks
• Estimated costs & required equipment/facilities
• How you’re going to share your project with others (other branches, schools, the public etc.)
• Some contact details – an email address and phone number

Our committee will assess any proposals and if we think the idea’s feasible then we’ll help co-ordinate things and provide useful contacts during the initial stage until you can get a project team formed.

Once you’ve got a team together we can support the project in various ways (publicising it, getting funding and so on), but it’ll be up to you to deal with the daily running of the project, reporting back to the committee every few weeks.

At the end of your project you’ll need to to do a little write-up outlining how it went and what your experience was.

Current National Projects

• UKube1
• REXUS 2013 Team: PoleCATS
• UK Space Science Heritage Project
• Asteroid search campaigns
• Globe at Night

Project Ideas

Radio Dish

We can potentially get the use of a 5m dish originally used for communication with satellites in geostationary orbit. We’re hoping to gain planning permission to erect a ground station at the Norman Lockyer Observatory in Devon. We need project ideas and equipment to service these projects. Our current ideas include:

• deep space network monitoring
• SETI
• very-long baseline interferometry radio astronomy
• communications with our own satellite projects (such as myPocketQub442)

We’re also hoping to organise some amateur radio courses if there is enough demand.

Balloon projects

We’re putting together some guidance on how to run a balloon project which we will make available to branches as soon as it’s done. We also hope to run an annual national UKSEDS balloon project in the not too distant future.

Meteor Monitor

(more details soon)

Long baseline interferometry radio astronomy

(more details soon)

Open CubeSat:

This is a project to collect together all the teams working on CubeSats in the UK to share information and aid advancements. It was started a little while back, but it’s been put on hold while we work on myPocketQub442. We’re looking for someone to take on coordinating this project, so let us know of you’re interested.

Stratos II

UKSEDS may be able to provide a proposal for a scientific payload. A project would need, at a minimum, on the experiment side, very committed team members on science, electronics, and mechanics, and in addition one team member would need to be dedicated to pushing the project forward.  If we can get that (preferably at one institution?) we think UKSEDS would be able to form a case that Stratos II would be able to use if they wished – please let us know more details if you would be interested in a UKSEDS payload Stratos II  E-mail: projects@ukseds.org. For more information visit: http://ukseds.org/projects/stratos-ii/

Funding

Funding is the biggest obstacle when it comes to putting things into space. Though we can give you some direct support we don’t have a huge amount of cash, so instead we work to get you funding from the space industry. In the past we’ve helped projects get funding from organisations like ESA, Astrium, Nexus, Vega, the Royal Meteorological Society and many more.

Contacting Us

Please e-mail projects@ukseds.org for all projects. The project manager will reply to your request as soon as possible.