I’m really pleased to have received a mark of 75% on my MSc thesis at Cranfield University and 72% across the whole course. My project studied on-orbit servicing, performing a literature review to evaluate progress so far before defining an example mission architecture with the OneWeb constellation as targets. I then assessed how future servicing missions could be enabled using currently available navigation, grappling and robotics hardware. It was really exciting to dive into this emerging part of the space industry and see how applications like satellite hardware replacement could trigger a huge shift in the space economy.

You can read my thesis in full by clicking the button below, or you can read all my reports and papers here, including a short paper based on the thesis.

Yesterday I began a fun new adventure with the start of flight training towards the Light Aircraft Pilot’s License (LAPL) at Cranfield Flying School. The school is based at my university’s airport, so is only a handy 10-minute walk from my flat, making it ideal for afternoon flying lessons when I don’t have any lectures.

In yesterday’s lesson, I performed the taxied to the runway, performed the takeoff, then once at cruising height learned about trim, power and the use of flaps. I also did most of the approach to landing, with my instructor taking control for the round out once we were about 20 metres or so off the ground.

It was a fantastic lesson to get started and I’m looking forward to my next lesson tomorrow and the rest of my lessons needed to get the 30 hours for my LAPL. I’ll be adding more flying blog posts to the new flying category as I go, so be sure to join me on the journey.

Just a short post today to say that I’ve started the next and probably final phase of my academic journey, with my arrival at Cranfield University. Over the next year here, I’ll be working towards an MSc in Astronautics and Space Engineering, with around 100 other students.

This is something I’ve been looking forward to for about 18 months, since I made the choice to downgrade my MEng at the University of Bath to a BEng and lose a year of the course so I could go do a specialised Master’s elsewhere.

So, join me as I embark on this big adventure. I’ll try to post highlights on my blog, but if you have any questions at any point, wing them my way on Twitter, @weasdown, or by using my contact form.

Happy New Year everyone! I hope 2019 is a great year for you all. Personally, I’ll be finishing my time on my BEng at the University of Bath and am hoping to join Cranfield University in October for a one-year MSc course in Astronautics and Space Engineering.

But that aside, I thought I’d let you know what exciting things you can expect from this website in the coming year.

The Website Turns 1!

January 12th 2019 will mark the first birthday of this website, so I’m looking forward to celebrating it and seeing how the site has grown in 2018.

Alpbach Series

I’ll soon be finishing my series of posts about the Alpbach Summer School that I attended in July. It was a really great 10 days and hopefully anyone looking to apply for next year’s Summer School can learn something useful about it from my experience. I’d also recommend checking out Lucy Kissick’s blog post and video about Alpbach if you want the perspective of a scientist rather than an engineer.

More Space Articles

I’m looking forward to writing more articles about space. Following on from my post about rescuing the Space Shuttle I’ll be writing a new post about what really would have happened if a Shuttle had become stranded in space. This promises to be a really gripping story and will present the engineering and psychological challenges side by side to make sure you get the full story.

A New Crisis Series

The Space Shuttle rescue post will form the first of a new series of articles all about how people handle crises. These will look at how teams form, how the people within them interact and how people work together to overcome extraordinary challenges. I’ve not quite finalised which crises I’ll be focussing on, but they may include the Thai cave rescue or Chile mine rescue. If you have any suggestions as to which crises I should feature, I’d love to hear them; you can get in touch on Twitter or by using my contact form.

One More Thing…

Finally, I’m hoping to launch a new photography site in the next few months to showcase my images from across various types of photography. I may also be publishing reviews and other related articles on the new site, but make sure to keep an eye on this site for a post when it goes live. I’ll also be sure to announce it on Twitter, so follow me there too to get the latest updates.

Once again, Happy New Year to you all and I look forward to seeing how this site grows and develops over the coming 12 months.