World Space Week Logo
This week is World Space Week! It’s particularly interesting this year for the South West of the UK as Cornwall has taken a step closer to becoming a space launching nation!
World Space Week takes place each year between the 4th and 10th October, and these dates were chosen because:
- 4th October 1957 was the date of the launch of the first human-made Earth satellite, Sputnik 1, and
- 10th October 1967 was the date that the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, came into force.
Each year has a theme, and this year it is ‘Space and Sustainability’! There are almost 2,000 registered events across the globe and there are almost 40 in the UK. Some of the global highlights include:
- The UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) hosting a webinar series on this year’s theme.
- In Australia, there is ‘Mission: Sustainability’, a challenge for Australian students to design a sustainable space station of the future; and ‘Mission OZ!’, a six-day virtual space mission for students ages 12 and up.
- 100Kin10 – a US national network of academic institutions, nonprofits, foundations, companies and government agencies – is launching free publicly available space-inspired science learning resources
- Kinder Joy has launched its new space collection. Designed for young kids, the space toys include astronauts, rocket ships, and planetary rovers.
- SDSC SHAR, Sriharikota the “Spaceport of India” is celebrating with a selection of public outreach programmes.
- Prestwick Spaceport in Scotland has released a short film to encourage young people to consider a career in Scotland’s end-to-end space sector.
All the events are listed on the World Space Week website, which you can sort by country and on a map, together with the details on how to participate.
There is one World Space Week event taking place in Cornwall, but the focus of the county is on the news that last week Spaceport Cornwall is officially opened its Space Systems Integration Facility to enable it to integrate satellites into the rocket ready for launch.
The official first launch date is still to be confirmed, but it is believed that a launch window will open up at the end of October and it is hoped that the first launch will take place in November. The Virgin Orbit LauncherOne rocket is currently expected to have six cubesats on board including:
- First Earth Observation satellite for the Sultanate of Oman;
- First satellite built in Wales by the Cardiff based Space Forge company, which will be a technology demonstrator cubesat;
- Amber-1, a cubesat developed by a partnership between Horizon Technologies and the Satellite Applications Catapult, and will monitor the maritime shipping;
- 2 Cubesats forming the Coordinated Ionospheric Reconstruction CubeSat Experiment (CIRCE) mission which is joint experimental mission between the US Naval Research Laboratory and the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory; and
- A UK Ministry of Defence satellite.
Spaceport Cornwall is also aiming to be the first spaceport to achieve Net Zero and have a strong focus on the sustainability of space launch, something we have previously written about. Net Zero in this context means cutting greenhouse gas emissions to as close to zero as possible for the launch of a satellite, but this will include the manufacture of the satellite, the transport to the launch site, the launch itself, the fuel and the various supporting infrastructure including the subsequent data processing.
Lots of exiting things are happening in space at the moment, so why not get involved.
