Date: 27 Nov 2008
Pioneering research that could revolutionise the future of space science is to be carried out at the University of Strathclyde thanks to a major funding award.
The €2m award was given by the European Research Council’s prestigious Advanced Investigator Grant programme which aims to support frontier research which could benefit the European economy. It is hoped that the research will lead to new technologies, products and services to revolutionise space science, earth observation and telecommunications.
According to Professor Colin McInnes, based at the University of Strathclyde’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, the research into future space systems requires a totally new approach. “Our research will investigate how new families of orbits can be generated by extremely large – and extremely small – spacecraft to underpin the development of radically new technologies.”
The Scottish university has a history of playing an active role in the European space industry. And Professor McInnes, who is leading the new research, believes that investigating the properties of new families of orbits will lead to limitless possibilities. Some of the new services which may be enabled through this type of work include continuous environmental monitoring of the Arctic or hugely increasing space telecommunications capacity.
Professor McInnes has been recognised for his leading-edge work with a number of prestigious awards, including the Leonov Medal, named after the Russian cosmonaut and first man to walk in space. His colleague, Dr Neil Hunt has just been awarded £1m funding by the European Research Council for his work into advanced physics.
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