National Projects
We host various national long and short term projects to provide hands on experience and important practical knowledge for our members The list of projects currently running is below. We are always looking for volunteers so please contact us using the contact form below if you are interested.
Branch Projects
We also encourage branches to run their own projects and share their experience. Some of these are listed on our Branch Projects page. We also run branch competitions to help branches fund their ideas.
Current National Projects
UKube-1 payload
(myPocketQub442) Our payload has been selected to fly on the first UK CubeSat mission. Read all about it on our webpage and visit the project blog.
REXUS 2013 Team: PoleCATS
The REXUS (Rocket EXperiments for University Students official project website,) program allows students from universities and higher education colleges across Europe to carry out scientific and technological experiments on ESA research sounding rockets.
PoleCATS stands for Conceptual And Tiny Spectrometer. CATS is a miniaturised plasma analyser being developed at Mullard Space Science Laboratory, but the team is drawn from Universities around the country. Visit our Team Website to find out more.
December 2011: We are pleased to announce that PoleCATS was selected for flight in Febuary/March 2013.
Radio Dish
We have the potential use of a 5m diameter dish, which was originally for communication links to geostationary orbit (GEO) satellites. We are hoping to gain planning permission to erect a ground station at the Norman Lockyer Observatory, Devon. We need project ideas and equipment to service these projects. Ideas include:
• deep space network monitoring (cf., amateur DSN)
• SETI
• very-long baseline interferometry radio astronomy (cf., single dish radio astronomy, and the fringe scientists) and
• communications with our own satellite projects (e.g., myPocketQub442).
We are also hoping to orgnise some amateur radio courses if there is enough demand.
UK Space Science Heritage Project
We are applying for lottery funding to carry out a series of UK space history interviews. The application is now complete, subject to final committee approval. If successful we will be looking for volunteers to carry out interviews. Training will be provided.
Possible Future Projects
Balloon projects
- we are putting together some guidance on how to run a balloon project which we will make available to branches in due course. We also hope to run an annual national UKSEDS balloon project starting in 2012.
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 in 2010, but has been put on hold while we work on myPocketQub442. We need someone else to take on coordinating this project, volunteers welcome.
If you have an idea which would benefit from collaborative support of the UK student space community please don’t hesitate to contact us and we can help you to make your idea reality.
Funding
Funding is the major obstacle when it comes to putting things into space. Unfortunately UKSEDS are not in the position to directly fund space missions but we can put you in contact sympathetic companies and institutions. In the past we have helped projects get funding from places like ESA, Astrium, Nexus, Vega, Royal Meteorological Society, etc.
From time to time UKSEDS may also run a competion to provide a lump sum to a branch that come up with the best project ideas. For info on this years competion please check out the Competion web page.
The internet can also be a source for those who look carefully. Websites like www.kickstarter.com allow you to put up general projects for funding by the general public.
Contact details:
Please use the contact form for all projects. The project manager will reply to your request as soon as possible.
