EADS Astrium
Neel Savani (Physics PhD)
9th – 27th August 2010
I am in the final year of my PhD in the Space and Atmospheric group in the Physics department. The
majority of my research has involved remote observations of solar storms from spacecraft on NASA
built missions.
As my research has predominately used the data from only a single mission, my experience of the
broader research being undertaken by scientists around the world has been limited. On my first day,
as I walked towards my new desk for the next month, I was suddenly hit by the enormity of the
building that looks like a giant greenhouse. Within this office are stationed many engineers working on
a wide variety of missions and working towards different scientific goals. In the foyer of the second
floor can be found literature of the various missions that Astrium are currently working on, as well as
life-sized models of spacecraft – and for someone interested in the space industry, it is quite exciting.
On my placement I joined the mission systems team working towards a possible future mission called
Solar Orbiter. This mission is under the banner of ESA’s Cosmic Vision programme. This mission
started as one of roughly 50 entries, and has successfully entered the final stage before the green
light for its build. My task was to work with Dr Mark Ayre and produce a graphical representation of
the maximum hard drive capacity required for the duration of the mission. Due to the Orbiters
complex trajectory, there are certain times when communication with Earth would stop, and periods of
intense observations and data collection for scientific reasons (e.g. maximum solar latitude) would
occur. My objective was to find the time in the mission when the maximum capacity of onboard
memory would be required, and how many Gbit’s would be needed. This analysis was carried out for
5 possible launch dates.
While working at Astrium, it was great to be involved with a wide range of projects, all of which are
looking towards the future of space science. The opportunity to observe the building of LISA
pathfinder spacecraft in a gigantic clean room was great, as was the time given to me to view a
design model of a Mars rover.
All-in-all, I found the industrial placement thoroughly enjoyable and a real eye-opener into the
technical issues being resolved from a more designer’s / engineer’s point-of-view.
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