Sp Re ac se e ar Ex ch pl Bo ora ok tio . n
The United Kingdom Space Agency (UKSA) is an executive agency of the Government of the United Kingdom, responsible for the United Kingdom’s civil space programme. It lacks any form of public image amongst the public and the aim of this project is to show the agency in a new light. It was established on 1 April 2010 to replace the British National Space Centre and took over responsibility for government policy and key budgets for space exploration, and represents the United Kingdom in all negotiations on space matters. It “brings together all UK civil space activities under one single management”. The UK space sector is thriving, with a total turnover of £9.1 billion in 2010/2011 (compared to £7.5 billion in 2008/09. This represents a real growth of 15.6% since 2008/09 and the average annual growth rate over the last two years surveyed has been 7.5%.
The UK Space Agency is at the heart of UK efforts to explore space, exploit space-based applications and technology and support our academic and industrial communities. The UK Space Agency also interfaces with other departments on security and military programmes. Collaboration lies at the heart of the UK Space Agency ethos and applies across Government as well as to external organisations including European and global partners such as the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Union, national space agencies and the United Nations.
The European Space Agency (ESA) is an intergovernmental organisation dedicated to the exploration of space, currently with 20 member states. Established in 1975 and headquartered in Paris, France, ESA has a staff of more than 2,000 with an annual budget of about ₏4.02 billion / US$5.38 billion (2012). ESA’s space flight program includes human spaceflight, mainly through the participation in the International Space Station program, the launch and operations of unmanned exploration missions to other planets and the Moon, Earth observation, science, telecommunication as well as maintaining a major spaceport, the Guiana Space Centre at Kourou, French Guiana, and designing launch vehicles. The main European launch vehicle Ariane 5 is operated through Arianespace with ESA sharing in the costs of launching and further developing this launch vehicle.
The UKSA uses its membership to the ESA to use their fleet of launch vehicles. ESA has a fleet of different launch vehicles in service with which it competes in all sectors of the launch market. ESA's fleet consists of three major rocket designs: Ariane 5, Soyuz-2 and Vega. Rocket launches are carried out by Arianespace, which has 23 shareholders representing the industry that manufactures the Ariane 5 as well as CNES, at the spaceport in French Guiana. Because many communication satellites have equatorial orbits, launches from French Guiana are able to take larger payloads into space than from spaceports at higher latitudes. In addition, equatorial launches give spacecraft an extra 'push' of nearly 500 m/s due to the higher rotation velocity of someone standing on the equator than near the Earth's axis where rotation velocity approaches nil. The Ariane 5 rocket is ESA’s primary launcher. Its maximum estimated payload is 6-10 tons to GTO and up to 21 tons to LEO. The launch craft has been in service since 1997 and replaced Ariane 4. The Ariane 5 rocket exists in several variants, the heaviest being Ariane 5 ECA, which failed during its first test flight in 2002, but has since made twenty-two consecutive successful flights.
Skylon is a design for a spaceplane by the British company Reaction Engines Limited. It uses SABRE, a combined-cycle, air-breathing rocket engine, to reach orbit in a single stage. A fleet of vehicles is envisaged; the design is aiming for re-usability for more than 200 times. In paper studies, the costs per kilogram of payload are hoped to be lowered from the current ÂŁ15,000/kg to ÂŁ650/kg (as of 2011), including the costs of research and development, with costs expected to fall much more over time after the initial expenditures have amortised. In 2004, the developer estimated the total lifetime cost of the programme to be about $12 billion. The vehicle design is for a hydrogen-powered aircraft that would take off from a conventional runway, and accelerate to Mach 5.4 at 26 kilometres (16 mi) altitude using atmospheric air before switching the engines to use the internal liquid oxygen (LOX) supply to take it to orbit. The skylon would reinvent the way we travel into space.
Artemis is a geostationary earth orbit satellite (GEOS) for telecommunications, built for and owned by ESA, in part by the UKSA. The Artemis satellite operates the 21.5E orbital position. The mission was planned for many years, with launch initially intended for 1995 and slipping; it was intended for launch on Ariane 5 but at one point there were suggestions that a Japanese H-II rocket might be used. Launched by an Ariane 5 rocket on 12 July 2001, it originally reached an orbit much lower than planned (590 km x 17487 km). It was remotely reconfigured to reach its intended station by means of a novel procedure. First, over the course of about a week, most of its chemical fuel was used to put it in a 31,000 km circular orbit (by raising first the apogee then the perigee, going via a 590 km x 31000 km orbit). Then, its electric-ion motor — originally intended for station keeping and for firing a few minutes at a time — was instead kept running for most of 18 months, pushing the spacecraft into an outward spiral trajectory. It gained altitude at the rate of about 15 km per day, until it reached the intended geostationary orbit.
The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity satellite (SMOS) is a part of ESA’s Living Planet Programme intended to provide new insights into Earth’s water cycle and climate. In addition, it is intended to provide improved weather forecasting and monitoring of snow and ice accumulation. Soil moisture is an important aspect of climate, and therefore forecasting. Plants transpire water from depths lower than 1 meter in many places and satellites like SMOS can only provide moisture content down to a few centimeters, but using repeated measurements in a day, the satellite can extrapolate soil moisture. The SMOS team of ESA will to work with farmers around the world, including the United States Department of Agriculture to use as ground-based calibration for models determining soil moisture, as it may help to better understand crop yields over wide regions. Ocean salinity is crucial to the understanding of the role of the ocean in climate through the global water cycle.
Salinity in combination with temperature determine ocean circulation by defining its density and hence thermohaline circulation. Additionally, ocean salinity is one of the variables that regulate CO2 uptake and release and therefore control the oceanic carbon cycle. Information from SMOS is expected to help improve short and medium-term weather forecasts, and also have practical applications in areas such as agriculture and water resource management. In addition, climate models should benefit from having a more precise picture of the scale and speed of movement of water in the different components of the hydrological cycle.
A short example list of medical advances directly related to space exploration and experimentation: -Digital imaging breast biopsy systems were developed from Hubble Space Telescope technology. -Tiny transmitters to monitor the foetus inside the womb. -Laser angioplasty using fibre-optic catheters. -Forceps with fibre optics that let doctors measure the pressure applied to a baby’s head during delivery. -Cool suit to lower body temperature in treatment of various conditions. -Voice-controlled wheelchairs. -Light-emitting diodes (LED) for help in brain cancer surgery. -Foam used to insulate space shuttle external tanks for less expensive, better moulds for artificial limbs. -Programmable pacemakers. -Tools for cataract surgery. -More efficient and cleaner water treatment.
SSI circuits were crucial to early aerospace projects, and aerospace projects helped inspire development of the technology. Both the Minuteman missile and Apollo program needed lightweight digital computers for their inertial guidance systems; the Apollo guidance computer led and motivated the integratedcircuit technology, while the Minuteman missile forced it into mass-production. The average price per integrated circuit dropped from $50.00 in 1962 to $2.33 in 1968. Integrated circuits began to appear in consumer products by the turn of the decade, a typical application being FM inter-carrier sound processing in television receivers. Today integrated circuits are used by everybody, at home and work, in our mobile phones and laptops; any piece of computerised electronic device and hark its origins back to the early space programme. Today this legacy is continued within NASA, ESA, UKSA and many other space agency’s as they push for smaller, faster and more efficient processors and integrated circuits to carry on board future space programmes.
A private organisation called Deep Space Industries aims to fly a series of low cost prospecting satellites in 2015 on missions of two to six months, with larger spacecraft embarking on round-trips to collect material a year later. The company hopes ultimately to land spacecraft on hurtling asteroids and have them scrape up material for processing in space or for return to Earth for sale. One long-term idea is to build a space-borne manufacturing facility that takes in asteroid material, processes it into usable alloys and other substances, and makes objects with the material via a 3D printer. Asteroids vary in their compositions, but some are rich in the platinum group materials and other highly valued metals. Some asteroids are largely made from nickel-iron alloys. Mark Sonter, a consultant geologist with the Deep Space Industries, said about 1700 near-Earth asteroids are known that are easier to fly to than the moon. Almost all of the material found in asteroids has commercial value, from the silicate gravel to metal alloys and water. Many of these asteroids will become profitable to the these organisations but also the continuation of life as we know it on earth. Many of these asteroids contain an abundance of finite materials that may be running out on earth.
The UKSA, like most of Earth, wish to avoid total annihilation. As part of its funding with the ESA the UKSA has been helping to ensure this does not happen. ESA’s Don Quijote mission concept consists of two spacecraft which are to be launched in separate interplanetary trajectories: An Orbiter spacecraft, called Sancho After arriving to the target asteroid and be inserted into an orbit around it, it will measure with great accuracy its position, shape, mass, and gravity field for several months before and after the impact of the second spacecraft. In addition, the Orbiter will operate as a backup data relay for transferring all the data collected by the Impactor during approach and image the impact from a safe parking position. An Impactor spacecraft, named Hidalgo After following a very different route from that of the Orbiter, the spacecraft will Impact an asteroid of approximately 500 m diameter at a relative speed of about 10 km/s. This spacecraft will demonstrate the ability to autonomously hit the target asteroid based on onboard highresolution camera. This experiment is designed to demonstrate and validate the technology that one day could be used to deflect an asteroid threatening the Earth.
To meet national needs, the UK Space Agency is responsible for ensuring that the UK retains and grows a strategic capability in the spacebased systems, technologies, science and applications. The UK Space Agency therefore leads the UK’s civil space programme in order to win sustainable economic growth, secure new scientific knowledge and provide benefits to all citizens. - Official UKSA Statement. -Oversees the preparation of an Agency corporate strategy and its effective delivery, monitoring and evaluation; -Provides the central focus for civil space policy and programmes across HM Government; -Manages the space projects and programmes under the Agency’s responsibility against schedule and budget; -Works with departments, agencies and research councils; and with industry and academia to ensure effective and growing exploitation of space across government, business and civil society. -Provides the face of the UK civil space programme to the UK general public. The 20-year aim of the UK Space Agency is to increase the industry to £40 billion and 100,000 jobs, and to represent 10% of worldwide space products and services (increasing from the current 6%).
THE PLAN
My plan is to produce an expansive brand guidelines manual for the UKSA. Opposite I have found a good image of the NASA brand guidelines for the short lived, and superior, NASA worm logo. This plan will involve me producing a new visual identity for the UKSA and finding suitable applications for them. This will involve a large amount of research and investigation into how to construct a brand or identity manual from scratch. What is especially challenging is finding out what exactly I need to include. So far I will need pages explaining the application of the UKSA identity to: - Space Craft - Aircraft - Land Vehicles - ID cards of staff - Mail stamps - Letterheads - Email signatures - Business Cards - Patches As well as content dedicated to explaining the use of colour and a set of clear rules explaining the application of UKSA identity and so on...
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THE PLAN
The second part of the plan is to produce a public facing handbook. This will attempt to rationalise the space industry and space exploration to the taxpayer who has to fund a bit of it. The handbook will aim to explain the huge benefits to the human race that space exploration has already brought us as well as what it could do in the future. What I think the UKSA really needs is public backing. The aim of the booklet would be to sway the British public in favour of the continuation of space exploration, which would bring jobs, great wealth and possibly a second industrial revolution. The booklet would be much shorter than the brand guidelines, but would offer more refined content and the opportunity to try out the brand guidelines in a real design.
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