Happy Birthday Prospero

In today’s hi-tech world, where new technology is out of date almost as soon as it hits the shelf, isn’t it wonderful that scientists are attempting to make contact with a satellite launched 40 years ago.

On 28th October 1971, the UK launched the first – and last – Black Arrow rocket, which carried with it Prospero, a satellite designed to investigate the space environment. Now, a team of scientists from the Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL) at UCL are to attempt to make contact with the satellite in time for its 40th anniversary.

Prespero actually started life as Puck, with the remit to investigate the space environment, test solar cells and detect micrometeorites. However, the Black Arrow project – which suffered insufficient testing along with launch failures – was cancelled by the Ministry of Defence shortly before the rocket was launched. However, as everything was ready scientists obtained permission to launch the Black Arrow rocket – with the newly named Prospero satellite.

The satellite was fully operational and conducted its experiments until 1973, and was contacted annually until 1996 – but it is still up there, and now scientists want to talk to it.

Because the satellite is in a low Earth orbit, it’s not expected to decay for around 100 years – it’s amazing to think that something we might have considered as just another piece of space junk might still be able to offer some useful information.

“It’s an artefact of British engineering; we should find out how it’s performing,” PhD student Rogier Duthie told the Space Boffins podcast.

Of course, scientists still have to figure out how to talk to Prospero – and that’s not going to be easy considering the satellite was built by the Space Department at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough – which has now been disbanded.

“First we have to re-engineer the ground segment from knowledge lost, and then test the communications to see if it’s alive,” said Duthie. “Then we can have drinks and champagne!”

The codes to contact Prospero, and the reports made in the 1970s were thought lost, but after much searching, the codes were found typed on a piece of paper in the National Archives at Kew, London. Even with them, the scientists face an up-hill battle to build equipment to ‘talk’ to the satellite.

Another major hurdle will be to gain approval from Ofcom to use Prospero’s radio frequency – around 137.560 MHz – which is now used by other satellite operators.

Even once all of this is complete, we still won’t know if Prospero is still working. The scientists plan to test the technology in private before making attempting any public demonstration. If the satellite is still alive, some of the experiments might even be working.

It’s certainly an exciting prospect – lets all keep our fingers crossed for some good news from the MSSL team. If successful, they might be able to call themselves the world’s first astroarchaeologists.

Author: Kerry Taylor Smith Staff Writer, Laboratory News