Day 3 of the Alpbach Summer School began with a lecture on Earth re-entry by an expert from the Royal Observatory of Belgium. Then came lectures on sample information versus context from the surroundings, and on challenges for sample return such as cometary activity. After lunch, we dove straight back Read more…
The first Wednesday of the Alpbach Summer School has included a selection of lectures from ESA, DLR and the Universities of Vienna and Leicester. Subjects included what we can learn from meteorites, mission design and analysis, why we need to bring samples back to Earth and navigation before and during Read more…
Today has been my first day of work at the Alpbach Summer School. The day started with registration at 8am, followed at 9am by open speeches from the Summer School Director, Michaela Gitsch, and other staff involved in the running of the Summer School. At 10am, a coffee break gave Read more…
Today has been the first day of my Alpbach adventure. Getting up at 5am was quite a shock to the system, but I was really excited to know that by the end of the day I’d be in a beautiful country that I’d never been to before. What I wasn’t Read more…
On Monday morning, I’ll be jetting off to Austria for the 2018 Alpbach Summer School, high in the Alps. For the past few days I’ve been making my final preparations, putting clothes together and checking into flights to make the whole trip as smooth as possible. The summer school will Read more…
EUMETSAT (European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites) is an international organisation headquartered in Darmstadt, Germany, that operates a fleet of Earth Observation satellites for users in Europe and around the world. On September 15th 2017 I spent a day visiting the EUMETSAT HQ and finding out about what they Read more…
Attending the iCubesat Conference in Paris and UKSEDS activities last week took more time than anticipated, so the hardware design has not progressed further since my last post, but I’ve instead been focusing on quicker jobs regarding software and regulation. Firstly, I have been finding the tools needed to program Read more…
Development of the first product for my shop, the AVR HAT for Raspberry Pi, is well underway. It will allow you to quickly and easily program an ATmega328P and/or ATtiny85 directly from the Pi by attaching the board to the Pi’s 40-pin GPIO header. I’m hoping to have the hardware Read more…
When you say “high quality lenses”, many people think of the latest and greatest pieces of glass from Canon and Nikon, which can easily cost as much as a decent laptop. However, the vintage lens market offers great opportunity for buying high quality lenses with fascinating optical effects for little Read more…
While reading the great textbook Fundamentals of Astrodynamics and Applications by David A. Vallado the other day, I came across a really intriguing problem (on page 420, for those who have the book) relating to a hypothetical rescue of a crew of the American Space Shuttle by its Russian equivalent, Read more…