• Question: @harriet have any satillites you designed become particularly famous?

    Asked by Pippa on 1 Nov 2021.
    • Photo: Charlie Young

      Charlie Young answered on 29 Sep 2021:

      Hi Harriet, great question! I didn’t design satellites but I did make sure they worked correctly for going into space. So, three satellites come to mind here:

      1 – Inmarsat2 – these are special communications satellites for the maritime (shipping) industry and during the 1st Gulf War, the military ‘borrowed’ one of the satellites we built so that NATO would have communications over the Middle East during this time.

      2 – Cluster. This was a special scientific mission that was going to look at the effects of the Sun on the Earth’s magnetic field. They were launched on the first Ariane 5 rocket in 1997. Unfortunately the rocket blew up just after lift off, along with the satellites. (there’s videos about it on line – look up Ariane 501)

      3 – Equator. A tiny satellite that was used for several space experiments. One was to see how far away GPS positioning signals could measure location (we use GPS in many things now). The experiment showed that GPS still worked a whopping 70,000 km away from Earth!

    • Photo: Harriet Gamble

      Harriet Gamble answered on 29 Sep 2021:

      Hi, I wouldn’t say any were famous but the most well known satellite I have worked on is ROSE-L which my team are designing now! It is a big imaging satellite for the European Space Agency (ESA). ROSE-L is part of the Copernicus Program and will provide loads of data to help Europe understand climate change, how we are affecting it but also look at things like land use for farming to help work out when it is best to sow seeds, collect crop etc. so we can grow more food and help stop global hunger. You can find out more about the Copernicus Program here: https://www.copernicus.eu/en/about-copernicus/

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