Irish engineers share in breakthrough on satellite

Five Irish engineers have helped to build a satellite which is to be sent into orbit next month on the European Space Agency's new Ariane 5 rocket.

The TEAMSAT satellite - actually a pair of satellites - was designed, built and tested in record time and at a record low cost, according to Mr Laurence O'Rourke, who worked on the project at the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Holland.

It took only eight months from initial proposal to completed satellite, he said, which compares favourably with the five to 10 years required to design and build a typical communications or scientific satellite.

Admittedly, TEAMSAT is a micro-satellite, one of the new generation of low-cost, lightweight devices which point the way forward in unmanned space studies.

"Smaller is much cheaper and you can produce them in batches," Mr O'Rourke said yesterday. "If you can make things smaller, then there is less mass, so it costs less to launch."

The TEAMSAT would fit in a one-metre cube and weighs just 310kg, he said. Its initial budget was tiny by satellite standards, although Mr O'Rourke could not put an exact price on the device.

The proposal for the satellite came last October from a group of students working in ESA's Young Graduate Engineers programme. They suggested a payload for the planned September 30th restart of the Ariane 5 launch programme. The maiden flight of Ariane 5 in June 1996 ended in failure when an explosion destroyed the rocket and its cargo, £400 million worth of scientific satellites.

Ariane controllers had intended to send up dummy payloads for the restart, but the engineers suggested TEAMSAT. ESA agreed and made its facilities at ESTEC available. "We were working most weekends and half the night every night," Mr O'Rourke said.

Costs were kept low by borrowing equipment, such as satellite batteries, from other missions, by using ESTEC's workshops and getting help from a team of students at nearby Delft University.

TEAMSAT will not lack scientific value despite its size. It comprises five experiments, including cameras to record aspects of the launch, a device to measure atomic oxygen high above the Earth and an experiment entitled "YES", a separate satellite in its own right.

"YES" will be "launched" from the main satellite with the aid of springs and comprises a further four experiments. It will provide data on "tethering", a new design concept whereby spacecraft can be separated, perhaps by miles, but remain linked together by a thin woven cord.

In all, 55 engineers worked on the project. Mr O'Rourke studied at Maynooth and at the National Microelectronics Research Centre in Cork before joining ESA on contract. The Irish involvement in TEAMSAT included Mr Ken Hernan, Mr Gerard Healy, Mr David Leane and Mr Glenn Adams, all participants in the Young Engineer programme. Their involvement shows that Ireland does not have to have a space programme of its own to become involved in space.