Lloyd Wood - more of a blog. less of a life.

Twenty years in space.

While reviewing video footage of our recent satellite launch, we stumbled across video footage of an older satellite launch.

And, two decades later, that older satellite is still up there, still working. I'd like to think that that bodes well for the newer generation of satellites.

The soundtrack to our footage has yet to be selected.

"more uses than we ever imagined..."

...that's Audrey Nice quoted in Ananova and other places.

They were ready to go. After a first and a second delay, they went.

Kosmos 3M Booster Carries Six Satellites to Earth Orbit (Jim Banke, space.com, 27 September 2003.)

Disaster aid satellites launched (BBC News, 27 September 2003.)

I had a pretty good view of the launch via a projector screen showing the Eutelsat broadcast sent up from Plesetsk. From six this morning we watched, eating pastries and drinking tea and coffee while standing in a lecture hall on the University of Surrey campus, surrounded by a couple of hundred people: SSTL staff, families, and associates.

Afterwards they broke out the bucks fizz. Latest news on the launch is available from SSTL.

Once in correct orbits, commissioning the three disaster-monitoring satellites will take some time; the UK-DMC satellite will be the third of the satellites to be made operational. But it's what's on the UK-DMC that could really matter.

Space Net - Space no longer final frontier for Cisco Internet gear (Cisco Newsroom, 26 September 2003.)

Siberia and Silicon Valley: we launched an American IP router from a Russian ICBM site.

Update Mon 29 Sep:

launch highlights video now available from Cisco Newsroom and Space Net article. Requires minimum of Flash 6.0.65, so you may as well install Flash 7, working RealOne, and Javascript. These direct links may be useful: broadband video and narrowband video. ENTER at top left to start.

Update 6 Oct:

Shooting for Space (Caron Carlson, eWeek, 6 October 2003)
Cisco shoots for the stars (David M. Ewalt, InformationWeek, 6 October 2003)

Update 7 Oct:

Space: the final sales opportunity (Andrew Donoghue, ZDNet UK, 7 October 2003)

Update 14 Oct:

Internet Space ( Shane Harris, Government Executive, 14 October 2003)

Update 16 Oct:

...and there's more on the onboard router in my slot clouds paper and presentation.

Update 30 Jan 2004:

Politics Show South (BBC One, 30 January 2004) features launch footage. 34kbps streaming video of the thirty-minute programme features a segment on Brits in Space (3:30 - 23:30), with coverage of disaster monitoring and SSTL footage and interviews starting at 11:30 and launch assembly footage and launch starting at 12:50.

Update 5 Mar 2004:

IT's final frontier (Colin Haley, internetnews.com, 5 March 2004)

Don't let them crash to the ground.

EuropeStar has a very neat 'Take Five' Quicktime video available from their site index. It uses juggling to illustrate satellite concepts. I liked the three jugglers together, which made me think of Clarke's minimum three-geo-satellite constellation.

EuropeStar is just up the road from Cisco's offices in Bedfont Lakes; I learned this when someone taking the morning bus with me turned around and asked 'Are you Lloyd?'. We'd also taken the same masters course in satellite communication engineering.

Ready to go.

Disaster relief from space (Helen Briggs, 13 June 2003, BBC News)

The UK-DMC satellite and its sisters are on schedule; they're packed and shipping out to Russia for launch.

Okay, they're not going to the Baikonur cosmodrome, where:

In the toilets of the commander's office building, the only paper on offer is torn from copies of Pravda
-- Beating the Martian Odds (David Shukman, 2 June 2003, BBC News)

...suggesting that the Truth can set you free. And, perhaps, provide relief.

I won't be going to see the launch from Plesetsk.

Surrey satellite progress.

Three SSTL Spacecraft Complete Pre-flight Tests At RAL For DMC (Space Daily)

I've still not been to Rutherford-Appleton Lab, but I know the guys at Surrey Satellite Technology who have been pulling shifts doing this testing, and I see them when I'm up at Surrey. It's interesting watching the international disaster monitoring constellation develop.