Katerva award finalists

Our TwinSat project for predicting earthquakes with satellites, a collaboration between British and Russian scientists and institutions, which include Alan Smith, Director of the

mssl.ucl.ac.uk/">Mullard Space Science Laboratory at University College London (UCL), Vitaly Chmyrev of the Schmidt Institute of Physics of the Earth at the Russian Academy of Sciences and Peter Sammonds, Director, UCL IRDR, was a finalist in the prestigious Katerva awards for the "best sustainability initiative on the planet".

The project was announced in early 2011 to mark the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's journey as the first human being in outer space. Slated to launch in 2015, the satellite will be comprised of two co-orbiting spacecraft - a 45kg microsatellite and a 2.5kg nanosatellite - known collectively as TwinSat. Each satellite will carry a suite of science instruments to measure coupling between the lithosphere, atmosphere and ionosphere (LAI). These LAI coupling events are associated with seismic activity and hence, are believed to be precursors to earthquakes.

Visit the Katerva award page for more information.

---