Plan To Resuscitate 1970s UK Satellite

A organisation of scientists and engineers is working on an desirous plan to resuscitate a unique UK heavenly body - still in circuit after roughly 40 years.

When the Prospero booster was launched atop a Black Arrow space station on 28 October 1971, it evident the finish of an era. A really partial era.

Prospero was the initial UK heavenly body to be launched on a UK launch vehicle; it would moreover be the last.

Ministers had cancelled the space station plan in the run up to the flight.

However, as the Black Arrow was ready, the programme team motionless to consent anyway. Prospero was bloody in to circuit from the remote Woomera bottom in the Australian desert. It turns out, the heavenly body is still up there.

Carrying a array of experiments to scrutinize the belongings of the space environment, the heavenly body operated successfully until 1973 and was contacted annually until 1996.

Now, a team led by PhD tyro Roger Duthie from University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory in Surrey is anticipating to reinstate communications in time is to satellite's 40th anniversary.

"First, you have to re-engineer the belligerent portion from ability lost, then assessment the communications to see if it's still alive," Duthie told the Space Boffins podcast .

"Then you can have drinks and champagne!"

But nothing of this is easy (apart from may be the champagne bit). The heavenly body was built by Space Department at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough but the subdepartment was damaged up long ago and the codes to meeting Prospero were missing.

"The technical reports done in the 1970s were considered to have been lost," explained Duthie. "We talked to the people entangled in Prospero, searched by dry boxes in attics and attempted the library at Farnborough."

Eventually they detected the codes typed on a square of paper in the National Archives at Kew, London.

But even with the codes, the engineers still have to erect apparatus to "talk" to the heavenly body and win approval from the announce regulator Ofcom to use Prospero's air wave frequencies - these days being in use by other heavenly body operators.

Once this "ground segment" is complete, the plan is to assessment the technology to see if it is still probable to talk with Prospero before attempting any open demonstration. If the heavenly body is still alive, a few of the experiments might even be working.

"It's an artefact of British engineering; you should find out how it's performing," mentioned Duthie.

If it works, Duthie's team can call themselves the world's initial astro-archaeologists.

Richard Hollingham is a freelance scholarship bard and broadcaster, and the co-presenter of the Space Boffins podcast .