The UCL200 edition of the Your Universe Festival took place on Friday 19th and Saturday 20th June in the North Cloister and adjoining rooms of UCL’s Wilkins Building, welcoming around 350 visitors across the two days to a lively mix of hands-on demonstrations and talk, a pop-up planetarium, and an immersive image experience, which showcased the UCL Observatory. The festival was open on Friday morning for pre-booked schools and Friday afternoon for internal and external guests, with the main public event on Saturday afternoon. On the Saturday evening, a further 100 guests filled the Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre for the festival’s closing panel discussion on the theme, Missions of Discovery!
Rocks, Rovers and the Return to the Moon
The CPS were delighted to be able to contribute three stands to the festival, including from our members at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL) and Birkbeck, University of London. Together with an exoplanets stand led by the Physics & Astronomy Astrophysics Group, we formed a Planetary Science hub in the Yellow Room of the North Cloister.
Lunar Exploration: Why Return to the Moon?
CPS Marketing and Outreach Officer, and STEM Ambassador, Karen Anne Devoil led the CPS’s flagship stand on the theme of lunar exploration, with a highly topical presentation on Why Return to the Moon? that sparked curiosity and questions among visitors of all ages. The talk and stand featured several 3D images of the lunar surface which attendees could view using special glasses provided and also showcased a rare lunar meteorite sample, on loan from the Natural History Museum, which was a huge highlight. UCL graduate Jake Clark Brown supported the CPS stand on Friday, with additional support from Birkbeck PhD student James Salmon on Saturday.
Rocks from Space: Meteorites and the Story of the Solar System
Colleagues from Birkbeck’s School of Natural Sciences brought the solar system to life with a collection of meteorites — rocks that have travelled through space before landing on Earth — alongside a stromatolite sample: ancient, layered rock formations that serve as some of the earliest evidence of life on Earth, dating back approximately 3.5 billion years. Visitors of all ages could hold the samples in their own hands, including the rare lunar meteorite on loan from the Natural History Museum, shared with the CPS stand, offering a tangible connection to the history of our solar system that proved fascinating for adults and children alike.
The stand was led by Birkbeck’s Professor Hilary Downes, with MSc graduate Alice Koole and PhD student James Salmon on the Friday, and by PhD student Louis-Alexandre Lobanov, Alice and James on the Saturday.
Mars Exploration and the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin Rover
The Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL) brought the excitement of Mars exploration to visitors, with a remote-controlled model Mars rover that they could navigate across sandy, rocky terrain. The stand also featured a model of the Rosalind Franklin rover’s masthead, showcasing two instruments designed and built by engineers at MSSL. PanCam - the Panoramic Camera system, with a science team led by MSSL - will act as the rover’s ‘eyes’, using multispectral imaging to investigate the local environment and geology of the Martian surface, whilst Enfys (Welsh for ‘rainbow’) - an infrared reflectance spectrometer, led by Aberystwyth University - will analyse light reflected from the surface to identify minerals and assess their potential as indicators of past habitable environments.
The Rosalind Franklin rover is a joint ESA-NASA mission, scheduled for launch in 2028. Once on Mars, it will be capable of drilling to depths of up to two metres below the surface - deeper than any previous Mars rover - to collect samples that are protected from the harsh surface environment and may preserve evidence of past life.
The stand was run by George Kollakides, a Space Instrumentation Engineer at MSSL, and Rebecca Warrilow, a PhD student researching the geology and habitability of Mars.
Missions of Discovery! - Evening Panel Event
The festival came to a close on Saturday evening with Missions of Discovery!, a panel event co-organised by Jo Fabbri, CPS Centre Coordinator, and hosted by Your Universe Festival Director Dr Francisco Diego. CPS colleague and Board member Professor Andrew Coates of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory took part as one of four expert panellists, presenting Looking for Life on Mars with the Rosalind Franklin Rover, exploring the science behind the ExoMars mission and what its findings could mean for our understanding of life beyond Earth.
He was joined by Professor Ofer Lahav (UCL Physics & Astronomy), who asked whether dark energy — the mysterious force driving the accelerating expansion of the universe — might be changing over cosmic time; Dr Sarah Malik (London Centre for Nanotechnology), who explored the search for dark matter at the world’s most powerful particle colliders; and Shana Sullivan (UCL Physics & Astronomy), a PhD student designing a miniaturised spectrometer to monitor ozone and air quality from space, with a focus on under-served regions across the Global South. Around 100 guests attended the event, and despite the hot evening, there was a lively interaction during the discussion session following the talks, with an abundance of questions from the audience to the panel, and queues afterwards to talk personally with the speakers.
UCL P&A Bicentenary - A Milestone Worth Celebrating
The Your Universe Festival has been a fixture of UCL’s public engagement calendar since 2009. This year’s UCL200 edition marked a particularly special moment - 200 years of Physics and Astronomy at one of the world’s leading universities - and the CPS was honoured to be part of it. We would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who staffed the stands, contributed to the panel, and helped make the event such a success. Also to the hundreds of visitors who came with curiosity and left, we hope, with a little more knowledge and awe about the universe we share.
Photos of the CPS at the UCL200 Your Universe Festival and Panel Event
Karen Anne Devoil and Jo Fabbri at the CPS lunar exploration stand.
Credit: Karen Anne Devoil, UCL-CPS
CPS Outreach Officer, Karen Anne Devoil, presenting a talk on 'Why return to the Moon?' to a public audience.
Credit: Karen Anne Devoil, UCL-MSSL
Professor Hilary Downes and Alice Koole at the Birkbeck stand with the lunar meteorite and other rock samples.
Credit: Karen Anne Devoil, UCL-CPS
The Birkbeck meteorite stand led by (L-R) Alice Koole, Louis-Alexandre Lobanov and James Salmon.
Credit: Karen Anne Devoil, UCL-CPS
MSSL engineer George Kollakides, demonstrates the Mars remote-control rover to a group of school students.
Credit: George Kollakides, UCL-MSSL
PhD student Rebecca Warrilow engaging with visitors at the MSSL stand.
Credit: George Kollakides, UCL-MSSL
MSSL engineer, George Kollakides, providing some essential maintenance for the Mars rover model.
Credit: George Kollakides, UCL-MSSL
Professor Andrew Coates giving his talk on the topic of "Looking for life on Mars with the Rosalind Franklin rover" at the Saturday evening panel event: Missions of Discovery!
Credit: Jo Fabbri, UCL-CPS
The speaker panel, (L-R) Ofer Lahav, Sarah Malik, Andrew Coates and Shana Sullivan, take questions from the audience during the Q&A session after the talks in the Gustave Tuck lecture theatre. With host, Francisco Diego (far left).
Credit: Jo Fabbri, UCL-CPS
Special thanks to the NHM
Our special thanks to the Natural History Museum Collections for the loan of the lunar meteorite sample, and to our Birkbeck-CPS colleagues Hilary Downes and Louis-Alexandre Lobanov for facilitating the arrangement.
Links
- Centre for Planetary Sciences at UCL/Birkbeck
- UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory
- Birkbeck, University of London, School of Natural Sciences
- UCL Physics and Astronomy UCL200
- UCL’s Bicentenary
Multimedia
- Hero image: AI-generated composite artwork inspired by modern space exploration, astronomy, and particle physics imagery from sources such as NASA, ESA and CERN.
- YouTube video: “Your Universe Festival: UCL200 edition”, credit: UCL Faculty of Mathematical and Physical Sciences.
- Gallery: A selection of photos from the Your Universe Festival and evening panel event. See captions for descriptions and credit.