Strathclyde Space Researchers Sweep the Board
Research students from the Advanced Space Concepts Laboratory in the Department of Mechanical Engineering took all 5 finalists spots in the UK competition to choose the national research student delegate for the 2010 International Astronautical Congress in Prague. Competition orgainser Dr Chris Welch from BIS in London noted that for the first time “all of the finalists come from a single university, Strathclyde, which reflects both the quality and the number of entries the institution submitted. We were very impressed by the range and the depth of work presented”. Laboratory director Professor Colin McInnes added “this is a truly outstanding result for our research students”.
The 5 finalists and projects were:
Russell Bewick - An L1 dust cloud as an effective method of space-based geo-engineering
Marta Ceccaroni - Extension of low thrust propulsion to the coplanar circular restricted four body problem for identification of asteroid centred non-Keplerian orbits
Jeannette Heiligers - Optimal transfers for hybrid low-thrust propulsion spacecraft to displaced non-Keplerian orbits
Charlotte Lucking - Orbit control of high area-to-mass ratio spacecraft using electrochromic coating
Giuliano Punzo - Swarm engineering with partial communication graph
After presentations in London on 24 February Jeannette Heiligers was selected as the UK research student delegate with Charlotte Lucking as runner-up. Further information is available at www.strath.ac.uk/space.
Strathclyde researchers push back space frontiers
Manned exploration of Mars could be a step closer to reality following a pioneering investigation by engineers at Strathclyde. Dr Malcolm Macdonald and team have found a new way to enable continuous communication from Earth to Mars with just one spacecraft, communications previously not possible for several weeks at a time when the sun obscures the Earth's view of Mars. Read the full article.
European Research Council Lecturer in Advanced Space Concepts
Dr James Biggs has joined the Department as European Research Council Lecturer in Advanced Space Concepts. James’ research interests lie in the application of modern dynamical systems theory, control theory and differential geometry to design and control motions for autonomous systems such as underwater vehicles, unmanned air vehicles and spacecraft. This research encompasses a range of challenges in space systems engineering, including station-keeping using active and passive controllers, designing solar sail trajectories for deep-space Earth observation and swarm control of nano-spacecraft. Future research will address safety-critical issues for autonomous systems using developments in the area of complexity science, including design of autonomous controls to bring a tumbling spacecraft to rest.
Supercomputer will take research to new heights
Next month, what is believed to be the most powerful single-installation supercomputer in Scottish universities will be switched on at Strathclyde University. The new £500k facility, provided by Esteem Systems Ltd, will enable Strathclyde’s Faculty of Engineering and Institute for Complex Systems to tackle some of the world’s most complex and challenging problems. With 1088 computing elements (cores) writing to a 100TB high performance disk storage area across a state-of-the art Quad Data Rate Infiniband network, this High Performance Computer (HPC) is designed for a peak performance of almost 13 TeraFlops (thirteen thousand billion operations per second), making it among the most powerful single computers to be housed in a Scottish university.
Project leader Prof Jason Reese, Weir Chair of Thermodynamics and Fluid Mechanics in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, said “The Engineering Faculty has teamed up with the Science Faculty’s Institute for Complex Systems to champion leading-edge computational research. This HPC — and a newly-appointed HPC Officer to support its users — will be central to a wide range of research projects, from the simulation of fluids at the nanoscale to the prediction of welding distortion and the aerodynamics of space re-entry vehicles. It is exactly the kind of high-performance research facility we would expect to find in an institution aspiring to be a leading international technological university”.
Celebration of Japan-UK 150 at the Royal Society of Edinburgh
As part of the Japan-UK 150 celebrations, Dr David Nash gave a joint lecture at the RSE earlier this month on Academic and Cultural Exchanges between TokyoTech and Strathclyde. It is 150 years since the Uk and Japan formally entered into links and higher education Japan owes much to Strathclyde. Professor Henry Dyer, a former student of Anderson's College, a forerunner of Strathclyde, in the late 1800's, founded the Imperial College of Japan later to become the University of Tokyo.
Dr Nash presented the background to this along with Professor Sadayuki Ujihashi, the academic co-ordinator of the Departments exchange programme. Dr Nash (top right) is pictured with Prof Ujihashi (bottom left) along with Prof Tariq Durrani, RSE Vice president and Mr Hosoya , Deputy Japanese Consul General, Mr Tim Ashton, Technical Director of Terumo Vascutek and Prof David Saxon who gave the vote of thanks.