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