Space Design Competition - International News

Nonsuch girls Trisha and Simran were selected at the National Space Design Competition to join the 12 member British team which went to the international final at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center this summer, competing against teams from all over the world.


British team ready the start at the Kennedy Space Center.

Students spent a week in Florida, with the competition at the Kennedy Space Center. After a few days rest, play and shopping students were ready to start the competition in earnest.

The three day competition concluded, after all teams have presented their technical proposals in the theatre. The judges went through the good and bad points of everyone’s proposals and eventually announced the winner.

Unfortunately we didn’t win, but those who are able to enter the competition next year will certainly try again.

An impressive journey and an invaluable experience that will undoubtedly help future careers.

We look forward to hearing the future successes of our amazing girls. Well done!


Follow the daily blog from Trisha here: http://uksdc.org/category/2015-competition/

Rosetta and Philae in contact again

NAVCAM image of Comet 67P/C-G taken on 14 June 2015 from a distance of 203 km to the comet centre. Credits: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0

ESA and its Rosetta mission partners have confirmed that another communication link has been made between Rosetta and Philae on Friday.


The signal was transmitted from Rosetta to ESA’s space operations centre in Darmstadt and received at 15:37 CEST on 19 June, and confirmed by the Lander Control Centre at the German Space Centre, DLR. A second signal was received at 15:54 CEST.


The downlink was stable; the two contacts received by Rosetta lasted two minutes each. Both delivered numerous packets of lander housekeeping and status data, 185 in total, which are still being analysed at the time of this writing. No science data were anticipated or received.


“We are very happy to have received signals from the lander again, and we are all working hard towards establishing a robust link between Rosetta and Philae,” comments Patrick Martin, ESA Rosetta mission manager.


This was the first signal received from Philae since 14 June. This was not unexpected, however, due to the pre-planned science operations of the orbiter, and its location around 180 km above the comet’s surface.


In the meantime, new commands have been uploaded to Rosetta to further adjust its trajectory and distance from the comet to improve the radio visibility between the two spacecraft, with the first sets of thruster burns having taken place this past Wednesday and the next set planned for Saturday morning. The goal is to bring Rosetta to about 177 km from the comet nucleus and keep it in a range of latitudes that maximise opportunities for lander communication.


The Rosetta and Philae teams will be closely monitoring subsequent transmissions between the spacecraft, not only to better determine the health of the lander, but also to understand the length and frequency of available communication timeslots. This information is needed to determine when to upload new commands in order to restart science operations and, similarly, when the data can be downloaded.

Space Design Competition 2015

Congratulations! Again Nonsuch not only achieved the National Finals of the Space Design Competition this year, but two students will now be part of the team representing the UK at the International Final at the Kennedy Space Centre this summer.

Trisha and Simran Y13 were part of the winning team at the national finals of the UK Space Design Competition held recently at Imperial College London. They will be part of a group of 12 representing the UK in the International Space Settlement Design Competition in July in Florida, USA.

For the national finals, teams competed to design and present a fully functional space settlement for 8000 inhabitants which would orbit Mars and Earth. Trisha was elected President of the team, Eunmi was Director of Structural Engineering and Simran was Director of Human Engineering. An extremely stressful 24 hours fuelled by caffeine and chocolate produced the successful results. A stellar achievement, well done!