Spacecraft
Herschel (Phase B/C/D)
The European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory (formerly called Far Infrared and sub-millimetre Telescope or FIRST) will be the first example of a new generation of space telescopes. It will be the first space observatory covering the full far infrared and sub-millimetre waveband, and its telescope will have the largest mirror ever deployed in space. It will be located 1.5 million kilometres away from Earth at the second Lagrange point of the Earth-Sun system. Herschel's three and a half metre mirror will collect the light from distant and poorly known objects, such as newborn galaxies thousands of millions of light-years away, and will focus it onto three instruments with detectors kept at temperatures close to absolute zero.
Planck (Phase B/C/D)
Planck will help provide answers to one of the most important sets of questions asked in modern science - how did the Universe begin, how did it evolve to the state we observe today, and how will it continue to evolve in the future? Planck's objective is to analyse, with the highest accuracy ever achieved, the remnants of the radiation that filled the Universe immediately after the Big Bang, which we observe today as the Cosmic Microwave Background.
Beagle-2 (Phase D/E/F)
Generally I find I don't have to explain what Beagle-2 is, or was. People usually know about it and have different responses. I worked in the Beagle-2 Flight Operations Team during 2003-04. The 3 of us were responsible for commanding, procedure preparation, monitoring of Beagle-2, development of science payload sequences, platform management, communications scheduling, and so on... every aspect of the operations of the Beagle-2 mission.
In addition, I was the Control Centre I.T. Manager, responsible for computers and systems used for Beagle control, data interfaces with NASA and ESA, and the security and maintenance of the networks we used. I never expect to have such a fun, rewarding, stressful job again. I always get asked what happened. We genuinely, honestly, have absolutely no clue. We have dozens, hundreds even, of possibilities... but not a shred of evidence to support any of them. Beagle-2's scientific payload was outstanding, world-class. I hope one day it gets to work on the Martian surface (and subsurface, and environment) and fulfils the hopes we all had leading up to Christmas 2003.
ESEO - European Student Earth Orbiter (Phase 0/A/B)
The SSETI spacecraft ESEO, European Student Earth Orbiter, is a micro-satellite esigned, built and operated as the first SSETI mission by a large team of European students working in a network of participating universities. I first got involved at the kick-off of this initiative as a co-developer of the internet-based development and management environment used to coordinate the project. Myself and my colleague developed communications, data-sharing, and educational tools using open-source software (MySQL, PHP, Perl) and demonstrated that the internet can be a viable alternative to a conventional team-oriented workspace. The scope of the project quickly outgrew the amount of spare time we had though, both working for Ph.D.s at the same time. In parallel, I was the team leader of the OBDH (On-Board Data Handling system) team in Newcastle, and spawned the OBDH team in Luleå, Sweden. During phases 0,A,B we developed the central satellite control computer and interfaces for controlling the other subsystems.
The system was based purely on COTS products, and used the lightweight, robust CAN network for platform and payload buses. ESEO is still being developed, but an interim craft, SSETI Express, is due for launch in the Summer of 2005, and is based on the same principles of low-cost, collaborative, educational, COTS, outside-the-box thinking that forged the SSETI concept way back in 2001.