Student success at the SmallSat conference

Earlier this month, two of STFC’s industrial placement students won the Best Paper Presentation Award at the SmallSat conference, the largest conference for small satellite research. Congratulations to Talha Baig and Despina Ioannide for this achievement!?

Talha and Despina have both only recently started their placements at STFC , and are both based at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus ; Talha’s working at RAL Space as a spacecraft dynamic testing engineer, and Despina is at ISIS Neutron and Muon Source where she’s helping to develop Mantid, a data visualisation software for neutron instruments.?

With his undergraduate research group at the 英国曼彻斯特大学 , Talha and his colleague Ali Khodadadi were working on a new method and mission plan for tracking space debris. Talha was developing a detailed propulsion system model for the mission and, after meeting Despina and learning of her software engineering background, she also got involved to develop a detailed software for detecting spacecraft debris and for sizing of the propulsion system. They jointly wrote up their work into a research paper, which they entered into the SmallSat conference competition.?

Talha and Despina’s paper proposes a conceptual design for the propulsion system of a satellite called Bob Sat, an orbiting tracker which could monitor space debris in low Earth orbit (LEO). Although most of us think of space as vast areas with nothing in, in LEO there are millions of pieces of space debris, with even micro-debris (less than 10cm in diameter) posing huge collision threats to satellites. Without friction or air resistance, the debris can reach speeds up to seven times faster than a speeding bullet, and could cause significant damage to a satellite.?

Currently, the only companies monitoring the debris in low Earth orbit are entirely ground-based. They can only detect larger debris, whereas an orbiting debris tracker could detect much smaller fragments. Talha and Despina’s paper proposes a conceptual design for such a tracker, focusing on its propulsion system. It would take measurements with a laser detector, and give the coordinates of debris pieces in 3-dimensions, as well as their velocity and angle of travel. They also suggest a mission plan for launching it at various altitudes.??

Together, they submitted their paper to the @SmallSat conference student competition. They were awarded student travel funding by the conference, and invited to attend earlier this month in Logan, Utah, representing STFC. Talha and Despina presented a poster on their work and won the Best Paper Award.?

While Bob Sat is only in the conceptual design phase, Talha says he’s excited to keep working on the project, as it holds great potential for developing a satellite to monitor space debris in low Earth orbit. He next wants to develop a live simulation which visually plots debris for use by satellites in avoiding collisions, continuing the collaboration with Despina and other fellow undergraduate researchers from The University of Manchester.?

Overall, they both found the experience of attending the conference hugely valuable, offering a wonderful networking opportunity where they learned lots about propulsion systems and how to navigate the space industry. Consequently, Despina says she would love to go into the space industry, perhaps working on software for human spaceflight. She found it inspiring to see that there is lots of room for major improvements and contributions in an ever-growing industry. Particularly, she says that seeing the variety of space work conducted here at the Harwell campus “gives me fuel to want to learn all about it”.?

For more details, read Talha and Despina’s paper.