A miniaturised payload featuring weather sensors developed by engineers at the University of Bath has been lost following the failure of the UK’s first satellite launch to reach orbit.
Spaceport Cornwall | Photo © Janusz Konarski / Shutterstock.com
Researchers at the University’s Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering built the TOPCAT payload, which was set to monitor part of Earth’s upper atmosphere to better understand space weather and help improve GPS and communications technology.
The failure of the UK’s first satellite launch took place on Monday evening, 9th January. The rocket suffered an “anomaly” after it was released by a jumbo jet, meaning the satellites it was carrying were lost.
Professor Cathryn Mitchell, from Bath’s Department for Electronic & Electrical Engineering and a member of the TOPCAT team, said: “This setback is clearly disappointing, but we know no launch is guaranteed to work precisely to plan.
“That said, this is all part of the research journey and success is about perseverance and we will find another opportunity for a launch. TOPCAT will fly again.”
Speaking before the launch, Dr Robert Watson, who is leading the TOPCAT project at Bath, said: “This is a unique and exciting launch, which will help us learn more about how space weather works in Earth’s ionosphere, where our atmosphere meets space.
“This will help us better understand how systems like GPS work, what their vulnerabilities might be in the case of events like solar flares, and how future systems should be designed.”
TOPCAT is part of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory’s (Dstl) miniaturised space weather instrumentation suite IRIS (In-situ and Remote Ionospheric Sensing).
IRIS is the UK’s contribution to the CIRCE (Coordinated Ionospheric Reconstruction Cubesat Experiment) mission in collaboration with the US Naval Research Laboratory.
CIRCE comprised two of the inaugural satellites planned for the Cornwall launch. They were the size of a large cereal box – measuring 10cm by 20cm by 30cm.
TOPCAT would have measured the electron content of different phases of GPS signals, helping to identify and understand how signals change direction as they move through the atmosphere, which creates GPS errors.
The Bath engineering team, supported by project manager Dr Ali Hadavizadeh, completed their work to deliver flight-ready payloads in just nine months, beginning in 2019, before the pandemic delayed the launch.
Launched from Spaceport Cornwall, based at Cornwall Airport Newquay, a modified Virgin Atlantic jumbo carried the rocket out over the Atlantic to a launch zone southwest of Ireland.
At an altitude of 35,000ft, the 747 released the rocket which initially looked to have been successful in reaching orbit, however, it was later revealed that it hadn’t been able to deploy its payload of nine satellites.
In addition to TOPCAT, other payloads on the launch had been developed by Bath graduates.
Dr Talini Pinto Jayawardena, who worked on TOPCAT at Bath, is now at Space Forge, an innovative new company testing manufacturing in space, started by fellow Bath graduate Andrew Bacon.
Prof Cathryn Mitchell said: “It has been a pleasure to work on this project, with a former Bath student on our team.
“We have had excellent students graduate year after year from our Electronic Engineering with Space Science and Technology Degree Programme – it is inspiring to see them taking the lead in UK Space innovation at this time when satellite technology is becoming increasingly important to the UK.”
