August 2019
Lessons from the Sun
...-scale. Shortly after, a spectacular aurora, bright enough to cast shadows, appeared along the southern coast of Britain. Spacecraft in geostationary orbit effectively became solar wind detectors as Earth’s magnetic shield buckled under the extreme...
February 2020
Preserving our space heritage
... Science Museum in London, donning a headset and taking a trip to fly around an iconic satellite of your choice - perhaps Britain’s Prospero, launched in 1971 and still in orbit. You could then compare its condition with the flight...
October 2021
Russia and China – a new space axis
...); Luna 28 (Germany); with the largest contribution, a laser landing system, drill, sample handler and analyser on Luna 27 (Britain and Italy). However, this is hardly a programme of cooperation. The days of the Soyuz rocket at the Kourou launch...
December 2021
The rise of the UK space economy
...of the UK Space Agency, which appears to be losing its role in determining strategy and becoming more focused on delivery. Britain’s separation from the European Union, ‘Brexit’, and the challenges around access to Galileo and positioning, navigation...
June 2022
Patent protection for space manufacturing
... its jurisdiction. Taking the UK as an example, the Interpretation Act 1978 defines the United Kingdom as being “Great Britain and Northern Ireland”, rather than as being anywhere that the UK has jurisdiction. By comparison, in the US, the situation...
October 2023
Space architecture on Earth
... when the first launch site was constructed at Peenemünde on the Baltic coast in the early 1940s. Britain had heard reports of a German rocket base, but did not know what exactly it was looking for...
