Stars in Irish Eyes

Our investment in space research is relatively modest, but our agreement with the European Space Agency can be of significant benefit to Irish industry

IT’S NOT likely that the Irish flag will be the first one planted on the surface of Mars when humans eventually get there. But it might surprise you to know that the green, white and orange symbol does crop up on the outputs of many international and commercial space-related projects.

Links with the European Space Agency, Nasa and private companies provide opportunities for Irish researchers and companies to work in the space sector, but some might question whether investing in space in the middle of a dire economic crisis is akin to stargazing on the Titanic. Or can space-related research and development really pull its weight and boost innovation and commercial success?

“We don’t have a specific national space programme,” explains Dr Bryan Rodgers, a senior development executive at Enterprise Ireland and a member of the Irish delegation to ESA. “Larger countries like Germany, France and Italy have their own agencies, but we don’t have anything equivalent. We rely on ESA for participation in space activity and our membership of ESA allows Irish companies and researchers to work in the space area.”

Ireland is one of the original members of ESA – we joined in 1975 – and based on our GNP we currently contribute about €14.5 million to the organisation each year, explains Rodgers. For that we get signed up to a mandatory “science” programme, which asks fundamental questions about space and its workings, and some optional programmes that address specific areas or missions.

An annual payment of more than €14 million isn’t small change, but the system is set up so that we get contracts awarded back to us as a member state, says Rodgers.

“They are obliged under the ESA convention to award contracts in Ireland to the value of €14.5 million minus an overhead,” he says. “So once they take an overhead off, Ireland should in theory get that money returned in industrial contracts.”

But it doesn’t quite happen that way, yet.

“In general we would be under-returned,” says Rodgers, who attributes the shortfall to Ireland’s current lack of capabilities to win contracts in some areas. “We join the optional programmes because we know we have industrial capacity in a certain area and we know we are capable of developing the technologies. But in the mandatory programme, which is the science programme, it’s not always clear that we have the capabilities in Irish companies in order to win contracts up to the total value to which we are entitled.”

However, he argues that we will eventually make good on the money we put into ESA’s science programme each year. “It’s rolled over and we will get it eventually, and they introduce special measures so Irish companies are supported in order to develop their capabilities and allow them to bid for contracts in the future.”

So what kinds of scientific and technical contributions has Ireland been making through ESA? “The science programme funds the missions that look to answer the fundamental questions about the origins of life and the universe,” says Rodgers.

“Last year Irish researchers would have been involved in developing instruments for the Herschel and Planck space observatories, which are making observations about cosmic microwave background radiation.”

Ireland is also signed up to more applied, optional programmes geared towards particular missions, such as the International Space Station or improving rocket launchers, and about 70 Irish companies have engaged with ESA over the past decade, he adds.

Irish researchers are also linking in with privately owned space companies, including the Ad Astra Rocket Company based in Texas and Costa Rica. Doctoral candidates from University College Dublin have been working on projects relating to the company's VASIMR plasma-based propulsion system, which ultimately aims to reduce travel time to Mars from several months down to six weeks.

Links with that company were supported through the now discontinued Fás Science Challenge, says Dr David Browne, a senior lecturer at UCD's school of electrical, electronic and mechanical engineering who has been supervising PhD students on the work.

While Fás was maligned over expenses and the programme was eventually discontinued, Browne argues that it played an important role in linking Irish and US research into space technology.

"The Fás people were pretty dynamic, they just went out and did it. The speed at which things could be set up was impressive," he says. And the links established with NASA can still play to Ireland's favour, notes Browne.

"The fact that we are working with both ESA and Nasa is an advantage as we can be a linchpin – space exploration is a global business," he says. "In terms of the innovation policy of Ireland Inc, any funding into ESA is exactly the right thing to do and any restoration of the links with Nasa is also an excellent visionary."

Rodgers echoes the value of links, and points out that winning ESA contracts can offer Irish participants a conduit to reach wider contacts. "They develop relationships with the large space companies through the ESA contracts and that can lead to other business as well," he says.

" we can clearly show that we win a high proportion of ESA contracts and that the technology developed by those contracts leads to other business – as a rough order of magnitude we win about twice as much in turnover based on technologies developed with ESA."

Rodgers also points out that innovations for going into orbit and beyond can also have a beneficial effect for those of us left on terra firma. "The technologies that are developed through the ESA programmes can be spun out into other areas, it's not just exclusively for space, and from our perspective that's important," he says.

"If a company focuses too much on space, it's too small a market, they need to grow their market so they can survive."

And he argues that being part of ESA is good international branding for Ireland: "Even though our contributions to the overall ESA budget are very small, there's a great sense of solidarity for Ireland to be involved in a European space programme and to see the Irish flag on the side of an Ariane launcher, it should be a source of pride."

Getting A Grip On Gravity

THEY SAY the only sure things in life are death and taxes – but there's another pretty unavoidable facet of being an Earth dweller: gravity.
Getting a better handle on what gravity's effects are could help us improve life on earth as well as during spaceflight.

Consider ageing – it might seem counter-intuitive, but an absence of gravity when you are in orbit or spaceflight seems to accelerate processes associated with getting older.

Discovering "distress signals" or biomarkers that flag these microgravity-associated changes could help us understand the processes involved and even identify people who may do well in space. One model on Earth to simulate the absence of gravity on the body is prolonged bedrest.

"It's not as easy as it sounds," says Dr Donal O'Gorman, who directs the centre for preventive medicine at Dublin City University.

"You have to lie in bed between five and 60 days and you are not allowed move or get out of bed for any reason. They also get people to lie with six degrees of head-tilt downwards because that simulates the vascular response to microgravity. It's a nice model to evaluate changes."

Being inactive in that position starts to take its toll quickly, he notes.

"We know that even within five days a person's glucose tolerance becomes impaired – so they will produce more insulin to get rid of the same amount. That's an early sign of changes in glucose tolerance."

O'Gorman heads up a topical team with ESA to look at early markers of metabolic change that could offer insights into ageing in general, develop better interventions for space crew members and even help select candidates for missions.

"If you have any type of energy imbalance, long-term spaceflight is going to become impractical unless that can be addressed," he says.

Another project with Irish participation is also looking at the effects of gravity on manufacturing processes.

"It affects lots of things like crystal growth for semiconductors, combustion and also solidification of alloys, because you have gradients of density in the liquid part and this affects the microstructure which in turn affects the properties," explains Dr David Browne, a senior lecturer in materials science at University College Dublin.

"Space is used to conduct alloy solidification experiments that are diffusion controlled – you do the same experiment on Earth as you do in space and the difference between them is due to gravity, so it enables you to directly quantify the effect of gravity."

UCD and Dublin Institute of Technology recently contributed to experiments on board an ESA sounding rocket that blasted off from Sweden to provide a precious few minutes of microgravity.

The results of such work can help develop better computer simulations for processes on Earth by taking the effects of gravity into account, explains Browne.

"There's no way you are ever going to make things in space for use on Earth, it's too expensive – but it's to get an insight into what we have to deal with here. We are stuck with gravity so we should understand it and maybe use it to our advantage if possible."