UCL DEPARTMENT OF SPACE & CLIMATE PHYSICS

Europe's next large space mission JUICE (JUpiter ICy moon Explorer) is destined to orbit icy Ganymede, a planet-sized Galilean moon, after flybys of Europa and Callisto. Unique among moons in the solar system, Ganymede is magnetized, which gives it some protection from Jupiter's harsh radiation and plasma environment, which the mission will also characterize. All 3 moons are 'waterworlds' in the sense that they have liquid water oceans underneath their icy crusts. Professor Andrew Coates of MSSL-UCL is a member of the ESA Science Study team and has spent the last 4 years contributing to the team effort to get the mission selected. He says 'Now the hard work really starts - preparing instrument proposals for this space odyssey which will launch in 2022, reach Jupiter in 2030 and orbit Ganymede in 2032. We look forward to the challenge of this fascinating mission'.

GlobIce, a €1 million project led by MSSL, started in 2005 and is a part of ESA's Data User Element (DUE) of the Earth Observation Envelope Programme. The main purpose of GlobIce is to define, implement and validate a sea ice information system to support the World Climate Research Programme Climate and Cryosphere project (CliC) with validated sea ice motion, deformation and flux products derived from SAR data in the ESA archive. The GlobICE project has been developed by a consortium of 8 partners and is due to complete in December 2011.

MSSL scientists and engineers are today celebrating the first successful operation of the electron beam in the laboratory's new Low Energy Plasma and Ion Calibration system (LEPIC). The original design concept for the novel two-chamber electron beam system was devised by Senior Instrumentation Scientist, Dhiren Kataria, and Facilities Manager, Alex Rousseau. Dhiren said, "We are delighted with this positive result, which is a testament to the hard work and expertise of the whole LEPIC team at MSSL. Thanks go in particular to Alex Rousseau for his part in building the system and to Gary Davison for developing the automation and control systems. We will now concentrate on commissioning the entire system to ultimately provide a world class facility that will underpin MSSL's space plasma instrumentation programme for, we hope, many years to come."

Prof. Andrew Fazakerley has been awarded this year's RAS Chapman Medal in recognition of his work as the Principal Investigator of the PEACE instruments on the Cluster and Double Star missions.

An experiment designed by MSSL students has been selected to be part of the payload onboard a REXUS sounding rocket launch to be launched in 2013. The REXUS programme gives students the chance to design and fly an experiment on a sounding rocket launched from ESRANGE in Kiruna. These rockets carry their payload up to 100 km above northern Scandanacia. Students from around Europe can submit proposals to fly experiments through the European Space Agency (ESA). This year, a team of students from around the UK were accepted to fly PoleCATS, an electron detector based on the work of PhD student Robert Bedington.

MSSL has today opened its first office outside of the UK at UCL's campus, Victoria Square, Adelaide. MSSL's Director, Professor Alan Smith was there to be part of the opening and also to be present at UCL's first ever degree ceremony abroad. The MSSL presence will augment the existing UCL School of Energy and Resources (whose students graduated) and the UCL International Energy Policy Institute. MSSL in Australia will focus on both providing engineering management training and education and also work with Australian industry and academia in the development of technology both for space and terrestrial applications.

Today is the 40th anniversary of Britain as a spacefaring nation.  On the 28th of October 1971, the UK launched Prospero - a science and technology demonstration satellite - on top of a Black Arrow rocket from Woomera, Australia. This made the UK the 6th nation to demonstrate a working orbital launch capability. However, this launch was to be first and last demonstration of Britain's capability.

Astronomers in two departments at UCL – Mullard Space Science Laboratory and Physics & Astronomy, and across Europe are celebrating today with the official selection of the Euclid space mission by the European Space Agency (ESA). This new satellite will be launched at the end of this decade and will provide Hubble Space Telescope-quality images across the whole sky.

UCL scientists/engineers are to provide instruments for a major space mission just selected by the European Space Agency (ESA).  The mission, called Solar Orbiter, will be sent into the inner solar system (as close as the orbit of Mercury) and will carry a set of telescopes to image the Sun and a complementary set of instruments to sample the outflowing solar wind. The mission will reveal how the Sun creates and controls the solar wind and thereby affects the environments of all the planets.  UCL has major roles in two of the ten instruments which will fly on the mission. 

At the centre of many galaxies are supermassive black holes which have the mass of millions of stars. The huge gravitation attraction of these black holes means that they pull in surrounding material. Some of the material disappears into the black hole, but some is ejected in turbulent outbursts. An international team of astronomers, including scientists at UCL’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL), has revealed some striking new features of such an outburst around a supermassive black hole in a distant galaxy. They found a very hot corona hovering above the black hole where ultraviolet light is converted into X-rays, and cold gas 'bullets' speeding outwards with velocities up to 700 km/s.

After a final thruster firing last week to deplete its remaining fuel, ESA's venerable ERS-2 observation satellite has been safely taken out of service. Ground controllers also ensured the space environment was protected for future missions.

MSSL is proud to announce the launch of its new website.

Staff at the UCL Department of Space and Climate Physics, also known as the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, have been working hard to create a new website for the laboratory. The new site showcases the science, teaching and industrial project work undertaken at MSSL.

Most of the matter in the universe is in a plasma state - a hot gas in which the electrons are stripped from the atomic nuclei. High speed plasma flows, or jets, are seen throughout the universe, from solar flares to emissions from black holes. A recent study by the Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Uppsala, and Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London has provided new insights into the mechanisms that control these plasma jets.

New results, published in Science and Nature, show that Saturn's moons can affect the planet's aurora and have their own atmospheres.