BIS West Midlands Branch Talks

BIS West Midlands Branch Talks BIS West Midlands Branch Talks
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    BRITISH INTERPLANETARY SOCIETY

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    English

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  • Updated on 2020-02-12 02:15:00

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CASSIOPeiA (Constant Aperture, Solid-State, Integrated, Orbital Phased Array)

At the root of many of the world’s greatest challenges is access to plentiful, clean, reliable and affordable energy. The concept of Space-Based Solar Power was born out of the 1970’s oil crisis, with proposals to meet the planet’s energy needs by harvesting solar power from geostationary orbit and delivering this as microwaves beamed to terrestrial grid-connected stations, unaffected by cloud, weather or the day-night cycle.

Although the cost of space launch continues to fall, power satellites have been hampered by the rotational mismatch between their Sun-pointing and Earth pointing parts – a power bottle-neck which has led to overly complex and massive designs which only work when first implemented at full scale and operated from this distant orbit.

Following earlier work commenced in 2013 (HESPeruS, JBIS, June 2016), Cash has found an elegant way to overcome this mismatch; combining the solar-harvesting and microwave power beaming components on the same modular structure, vastly reducing the mass, complexity and cost with the ability to operate at much smaller scales from nearer orbits.

Since filing for a patent in 2017, Cash has presented CASSIOPeiA around the world, has received independent verification (published in peer-reviewed journals) and now sits as a UK representative on the IAF Space Power Committee.

SERENITY Spacesuit Simulator – 2nd generation spacesuit simulator

The SERENITY spacesuit simulator is a second-generation spacesuit simulator of the Austrian Space Forum. Mimicking the restrictions and technical aids expected for a Mars spacesuit in 2-3 decades. In order to reflect the correct force-to-mass ratio, selected subsystems are open-loop systems (like TCS and ventilation) to allow for a realistic weight perception.

SERENITY is based upon 10 years of development on the preceding Aouda.X suit, including 750+ simulated EVA hours during 12 field missions and laboratory tests

The development of the Serenity spacesuits started in 2018, the commissioning will take place in 2020. All analogue astronauts will be trained on this new generation of spacesuit.

The biggest change to the Aouda spacesuit is the implementation of a rear-entry concept. That means instead of donning several parts of the spacesuit e.g. shoes, trousers, hard-upper torso the analogue astronaut enters the suits on the back-side. The suit itself will be docked at a suitport on the outside of a habitat. The big advantage is that on the one hand, sand & dust stays outside the habitat (contamination!) and on the other side that donning time can be reduced by about 50%. This time can be used to do more experiments during a Mars simulation.