Universities launch pioneering space programme to boost UK skills and graduate opportunities

A collaboration between the universities of Surrey, Portsmouth and Southampton, is giving students in the Space South Central region a unique opportunity to design and launch a satellite mission.

JUPITER – the Joint Universities Programme for In-Orbit Training, Education and Research – will equip participants with invaluable hands-on space industry experience and training for their future careers.

Connecting business and academia, the pioneering programme will also help address the UK space sector’s growing demand for specialist skills, and demonstrate the impact of regional space clusters to boost innovation and growth as part of the National Space Strategy.

In addition to its university relationships, Space South Central also represents more than 170 space-related businesses across Hampshire, Surrey and the Isle of Wight.

For JUPITER’s inaugural project, engineering and physics students from all three universities will design, build and test their own Earth observation payload for a satellite mission, be involved with its launch and, once in orbit, conduct mission operations from the University of Surrey’s ground station at Surrey Space Centre.  

The student team, with members from undergraduate to PhD level, has already started work, led by University of Surrey PhD student, Ieuan Carney.  He said: “This project is a great opportunity for students to get hands-on with real space engineering, allowing us to further develop skills from our degrees.

“As the student team lead, I’m already seeing progress in the students’ ability to not only identify potential design challenges, but also in how they’re improving their designs to overcome potential problems.

“We’re incredibly grateful for this opportunity to advance our skills as spacecraft engineers."

Professor Adam Amara, Director of Space Strategy at the University of Surrey, which is responsible for coordinating, designing and delivering the mission, said: “This is a fantastic opportunity for students and academics from three universities to work together on an ambitious project. 

“The JUPITER programme is a phenomenal way to further build the space skills in the UK’s South Central region and get people excited about space, the careers it offers, and the way it inspires people of all ages."

Dr Becky Canning, Deputy Director for Space and project lead at the University of Portsmouth, said: “Our Universities are privileged to have a deep connection to our vibrant regional space sector and to have a strong heritage and partnership in space research, and it is a delight to be able to strengthen that partnership through this exciting project.”

“This ongoing partnership will offer an exceptional learning and outreach opportunity to our current and future students and to local schools, ensuring the sector continues to thrive.”

Professor Hendrik Ulbricht, leading the University of Southampton’s involvement, said: “This is a great opportunity for us to conduct a long-dreamed-of experiment in space.

“We have the unique chance to do a fundamental physics experiment and directly test for low-mass Dark Matter in space with our levitated mechanical sensors, which are at an early stage of development and will aid our research in the future.”

David Bowman, Radio Frequency Communications Engineer and team lead for the AMSAT-UK payload on Jovian-1, said: “AMSAT-UK is delighted to be offered the opportunity to provide a payload on the exciting Jovian 1 mission.

“The FUNcube Lite payload will provide a U/V FM voice transponder facility for amateurs to use for international communications. In addition, it will also transmit telemetry, messages and mission data for educational outreach for schools and colleges using the tried-and-tested FUNcube data format."