The UK's first 50 years in space
Skylark launch
1957 was a landmark year for British scientists and engineers. In February, a team led by University College London launched the first Skylark rocket, which carried a payload to study the effects of microgravity. The Skylark programme, which ran until April 2005, holds the record for the World's longest running space programme and carried out investigations into atmospheric conditions, X-ray astronomy and land use.
The Lovell Telescope
under construction
In the summer of 1957, the largest telescope in the world, the Mark 1 radio telescope at Jodrell Bank (renamed the Lovell Telescope in 1987 in honour of its founder, Sir Bernard Lovell) neared completion. The first detections were made in August and in October, it was used to track the upper stage of Sputnik-1's launch vehicle. Today, the Lovell Telescope remains the third largest in the world and has played a vital role in the discovery of quasars, pulsars, masers and gravitational lenses.
Ariel-1
In 1959, the UK signed up to collaborate with the US on satellites for scientific research. The first British experiments were launched into space in 1962 aboard Ariel 1, a satellite to study the ionosphere and its interaction with solar radiation. A year later, Ariel 3 was the first satellite to be built entirely in Britain. It also carried experiments to investigate the upper atmosphere.
Black Arrow
During the 1950s and 60s, the UK was also developing its own rocket launcher programme. This culminated in 1971 with the launch of the Prospero satellite, designed to test out solar cells, by a Black Arrow rocket, the first and only time a British satellite has been launched by a British rocket.
Other European countries had also shown an early interest in the potentials of spaceflight and the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO) was set up in 1961. ESRO developed over next decade and in 1975 merged with the European Launcher Development Organisation to form the European Space Agency, with the UK as a founder member.
Through ESA, UK scientists have participated in missions to explore the depths of the Universe and our own planetary neighbourhood. Successes include:
- IUE - the International Ultraviolet Observatory, a joint ESA/NASA/UK venture, was the longest serving astronomical mission, operating from 1978-1996.
- ISO - the first infrared observatory. There was UK involvement in three of ISO's four instruments.
- Giotto - encountered Halley's Comet in 1986 and took the first images of a comet's nucleus. UK teams led development of two of Giotto's instruments.
- The Hubble Space Telescope - a joint mission with NASA that has been a landmark for astronomers. Around 4,000 scientific papers have been published using Hubble data, making it the most successful astronomical project of all time. UK scientists were involved in building Hubble's Faint Object Camera.
- Huygens - landed on Titan, Saturn's largest moon, in January 2005. This is the most distant landing from Earth and the only landing in the outer Solar System. The "Surface Science Package" the first instrument to touch the surface was designed and built in the UK.
- Cluster - the first formation-flight mission. The four Cluster satellites are mapping the Earth's magnetospheric environment in four dimensions. Four of Cluster's 11 instruments were led by UK teams.
- Mars Express - the first sub-surface radar sounding of another planet, which has led to the discovery of large quantities of ice buried beneath the Martian surface. UK scientists are involved in three instruments carried by Mars Express. The Beagle 2 lander, which was lost in December 2003, was designed and built primarily in the UK.
- Venus Express - the first images of the Venusian south pole and the dramatic double vortex in the south polar atmosphere. There is UK involvement in four instruments on Venus Express.
The UK continues to collaborate on space missions with partners around the world, such as with NASA on the Swift satellite observatory, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the two STEREO solar observatories, and with the Japanese space agency on the Hinode solar telescope.
UK industry has also built and contributed to many space missions. ENVISAT and Giotto were built by British Aerospace (now part of EADS Astrium) in Bristol. EADS Astrium continues to design, build and test space systems at its sites in Stevenage and Portsmouth.
Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd was set up in 1985 by the University of Surrey in Guildford to develop commercially the University's success in designing and building microsatellites. It has now launched 27 small satellites, including the innovative Disaster Monitoring Constellation (operated with Algeria, Nigeria, China and associate partner, Turkey) which provides daily images of the entire Earth's surface for applications including global disaster monitoring.
In total, there are 50 companies in the UK involved in space and more than 40 university departments with space research interests.