Revolutionising space with your very own satellite

what do you picture

when i ask you to think of space

i imagine some of you might picture a

beautiful galaxy

maybe you think of an astronaut standing

on the moon

or maybe you picture some of our planets

maybe the iconic rings of saturn

but when i think of space i see

something completely different

i see the satellite data that helped a

farmer in brazil

grow the coffee in this cup i see the

tracking data

that tracked this coffee as it traveled

across the atlantic ocean

i see the map that told me where i could

stop on route today to get my coffee

i see the weather forecast that told me

that i was going to have to bring an

umbrella today

and i see the backbone of our banking

industry that meant that i could pay for

this coffee

with just a tap of my wallet

and when you leave here today i want you

to see what i see

i want you to see that space is all

around us and it touches every aspect of

our lives

now i do think it’s fair to say that for

a long time

space was the realm of an elite few the

astronomers

the astronauts the rocket scientists

and there’s a good reason for that space

travel

is really really hard as soon as we

build a spacecraft and send it up into

space

if something goes wrong we can’t just

send an engineer up to fix

it so we have to be sure that every

spacecraft that we build

is going to work perfectly every single

time

and so to do that what we would do is

take a long time over the design

we were trying not to change too much as

we built our spacecraft

and we would make sure that we always

used tried and tested technologies

and for a long time this worked really

really well

we have carried out some incredible

space missions

many of which have lasted longer and

achieved more

than we would ever have thought was

possible

but there is a downside of this way of

working

let me tell you about mbsat nvsat was a

european space agency mission that was

launched in 2002 to study our world

it sent back the beautiful images that

you see behind me

it studied our land our oceans and our

atmosphere and taught us more about our

world than we had ever known before

so mbsat was an incredible mission

but it was also a huge mission in more

ways than one

the nvsat spacecraft itself was about

the size of a bus

and weighed eight tons it took ten years

to build and launch

and it cost about 2 billion euros

now you would think that for that kind

of money we would be getting

cutting-edge top-of-the-range technology

and yet when nvsat launched in 2002 it

was using tape recorders on board for

storage

to put that in perspective in 2002 we

were seeing the first usb

memory sticks on the shelves here on

earth

and so because of this need to use tried

and tested technologies

nvsap was already years out of date by

the time it launched into orbit

and by the time it sent back its last

images in 2012

the technology on board was decades out

of date

so yes nvsat was an incredible mission

but it just makes me wonder imagine what

nvsat could have achieved

in 2012 if it had had

2012 technology

and what’s really interesting is that it

was actually this miniaturization of

technology

the usb sticks the sd cards that would

end up disrupting the space

industry forever groups of professors

and students in the usa realized that by

cannibalizing

parts out of their mobile phones and

their laptops

they could build spacecraft that were

smaller and cheaper than

anything that had come before some of

them

like this one here small enough to hold

right in your hand and sure

they weren’t as reliable as the big

spacecraft that we had traditionally

built

but it didn’t matter because these

spacecraft had their own unique

advantages

the first thing that made these

spacecraft so incredible was that they

were so quick to build

so where nvsat took 10 years to build

and launch

these small spacecraft could be built in

less than 12 months

so now the technology that we were

sending into space could actually be

up-to-date cutting-edge technology

the second big advantage of these

spacecraft was that they were so cheap

so suddenly developing countries who for

a long time

had to rely on agencies like nasa and

the european space agency to get their

space data

suddenly they could build their own

bespoke missions

they could send spacecraft up to monitor

their economic growth

plan their urban expansions predict

their farmers yields

and even to support their people as they

responded to disasters like flood

and fire

and the third thing that made these

spacecraft such incredible game changers

was that they were so small and light

and so instead of

building one huge spacecraft to send

into space

we could send lots of little ones

now to explain to you why we might want

to send

lots of spacecraft into space i’m going

to have to give you a tiny little lesson

in astrodynamics

but don’t worry because it’s not as

complicated as we’d like to have you

believe

and in fact to start i’m actually going

to teach you first

about the wonderful glasgow subway

system

now for anyone who’s not familiar the

glasgow subway system

is an incredible piece of engineering it

consists of two

concentric rings of tracks on one the

trains go clockwise

on the other the trains go

anti-clockwise and all of the trains

stop at all of the stations

so it’s fantastic if you have no sense

of direction because you absolutely

cannot get lost

now imagine that there’s only one subway

car

on one of these tracks if you turn up at

the station and just miss that train

then you have to wait for that car to

come the whole way back around again

before you can take your journey

but if there’s more subway cars on the

line then you don’t have to wait as long

to take a trip and it’s exactly the same

in space

when we launch a spacecraft up into

space to look down at our earth

we put it into a circular or oval path

around our earth that we call in orbit

and as the spacecraft travels around its

orbit the earth rotates

underneath it now this is fantastic

because what that means is that with one

spacecraft

in one orbit we can see anywhere in the

world

but the downside is that once our

spacecraft has passed over a point on

the earth

it might take days or even weeks before

it’ll fly over that location

again but just like the glasgow subway

the more spacecraft that we have in

orbit the less time we have to wait for

a spacecraft to come overhead

and in fact if we had enough spacecraft

in orbit

we’d be able to see anywhere on earth

at any time

now i know what you’re going to ask next

isn’t it going to get crowded up there

and the sad truth is that it already is

crowded up there

so yes space is really really big

but our little orbital neighborhood is

starting to get busy

we’ve already seen the first spacecraft

collisions

in 2009 two spacecraft smashed into each

other

shattering into more than 2 000 pieces

which are now flying around the earth

some of which are going to stay in orbit

for more than a century

and the more spacecraft that we put into

orbit the greater the chance that these

type of collisions are going to happen

now there is something that we can do

about this

if we put our spacecraft into orbits

that are close to the earth

there’s a little bit of atmosphere left

there and so as our spacecraft moves

around the earth it crashes into little

molecules of the atmosphere

and these slow it down until eventually

it spirals down towards our earth

burning up in the lower atmosphere it’s

a natural spacecraft removal service

now if you’ve spent 2 billion euros and

10 years building your spacecraft

you probably don’t want to put it

somewhere where it’s going to burn up in

three or five years

but if you’ve spent 12 months and 10 000

euros building your spacecraft

then maybe you don’t mind if it

de-orbits in three years or even in one

year

in fact maybe it’s even an advantage

because once that spacecraft you orbit

you can replace it with a new one that

has new up-to-date technology on board

so you can make sure that the data that

you’re getting from space

is always the best that it can be

so yes there is an argument to say that

these small spacecraft

could contribute to our growing space

debris problem

but i think they can also be a part of

the solution

as long as they are used sustainably and

responsibly

and that’s really the question we’ve

seen it here on earth

when corporations have to choose between

profitability and sustainability

they don’t always make the choice that

we would like them to make

and so it’s up to all of us to ensure

that the companies

agencies and governments that are

operating in our space environment are

doing so responsibly

and the only way for us to do that is

for us to stop

seeing it as the realm of an elite few

and start seeing it as a shared space

for all of us

and the truth is that thanks to these

small satellites

space really is more accessible and open

and closer than ever before

today you can buy a small satellite like

this one

for as little as five thousand dollars

and you can launch it into orbit for as

little as a thousand dollars a kilogram

if these reductions in price that we’ve

seen continue

then by the year 2040 it could be

possible

to buy and launch your own spacecraft

for the cost of a high-end mobile phone

today

just think universities

high schools societies even individuals

like you

could all buy build and launch your own

spacecraft

now if you had a spacecraft of your very

own today

there’s probably not an awful lot that

you could do with it but

that’s the great thing about these small

spacecraft

there’s strength in numbers

imagine if you had your own spacecraft

that was part of a global network of

spacecraft all working together

each spacecraft might have its own

individual task

some might take images of the earth some

might measure rainfall

some might predict the weather some

might even look away from the earth

searching for new planets or hunting for

extraterrestrial life

but whatever these spacecraft are doing

all of the information that they

gather would be shared with every other

spacecraft in the network

and we would be made available to

everyone

just imagine what we could do with all

of that information

we already use satellite data for so

much

farmers use satellite data to predict

their crop yields and to plan the

sustainable growth of their farms

forestry commissions use it to plan

their sustainable logging

and to prevent illegal logging

fisheries use it to monitor fish stocks

prevent

illegal fishing and even to protect

against

piracy but i think

this is just the tip of the iceberg

imagine what we could do if anyone in

the world could have access to all of

this data and

so much more

and that’s really what i want to ask you

today

if you could have your very own

spacecraft

if you could be a part of this global

network of spacecraft

if you could have access to all of the

information about anywhere in our planet

at any time

what would you do

would you use it to find the best surf

for your next weekend away

would you use it to find the best snow

for your next ski holiday

would you use it to monitor the global

fashion industry

to make sure the clothes that you’re

buying are being manufactured ethically

would you use it to work out what the

carbon footprint of your avocado toast

really is

or would you do something completely

different

would you do something that no one has

even thought of yet

would you do something that only you can

do

something that could change the world

thank you