Mission confirmed: UK’s Sarah Brightman to blast off to space

Private Spacefarer Sarah Brightman Undergoes Medical Tests

The Space Adventures agency has confirmed that Phantom of the Opera star Sarah Brightman has signed an agreement with the Russian Space Agency and secured herself a space trip in 2015.

Brightman will become the next private spacefarer to the ISS following Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte who traveled into space in 2009.

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Mission confirmed: UK's Sarah Brightman to blast off to space

Private Spacefarer Sarah Brightman Undergoes Medical Tests

The Space Adventures agency has confirmed that Phantom of the Opera star Sarah Brightman has signed an agreement with the Russian Space Agency and secured herself a space trip in 2015.

Brightman will become the next private spacefarer to the ISS following Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte who traveled into space in 2009.

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Pictures released of UKube-1 CubeSat

Clyde Space have released pictures showing the progress of UKube-1 as they prepare the satellite for a Soyuz launch planned for March 2013.

UKube-1 is the UK Space Agency’s first CubeSat and plans to carry an amateur radio 435/145 MHz linear transponder developed by AMSAT-UK.

Last year as part of the UKube-1 project and a student project at Cornell, the deployable solar panels were on a zero-G flight.

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Cubesat Community Workshop

The UK Space Agency will be running a Cubesat Community Workshop in January. Registration for the workshop is now open. This is a free event and is open to all, hosted by the Open University, Milton Keynes, on 22 January 2013. Please note that space is limited and places will be allocated on a first come, first serve basis.

The event will be an opportunity for the UK Space Agency to provide the cubesat community with an update on its pilot cubesat mission UKube-1, due for launch in early 2013, and to discuss the overall philosophy and timing for the proposed UKube-2 programme. Attendees will have the opportunity to provide input on the future direction of a proposed rolling national programme of cubesat missions.

Parallel breakout sessions will be held as detailed in the downloadable programme. These themes have been selected in response to the common issues raised by members of the community. The findings from each session will feed into a concluding discussion in which follow up actions will be identified.

To confirm attendance, please email ryan.king@ukspaceagency.bis.gsi.gov.uk indicating which breakout session you would prefer to attend, by the 21st December. One of the stated aims of the workshop is to encourage more potential cubesat users to engage with the programme, therefore please share the news.

Download the proposed programme. (PDF, 17 Kb)

Prison Inmates Build Deployers for CubeSats

NBC News reports that inmates at San Quentin prison are building CubeSat orbital deployers.

P-PODs, Poly Picosatellite Orbital Deployers are aluminum boxes designed to hold tiny satellites known as CubeSats, which ride “piggyback” into space as secondary payloads.

NBC quotes Ariel Wainzinger, a man with ten months left on his sentence, as saying: “You come to prison and you think it’s gonna be all gloom and doom and you find yourself with a lot of different opportunities and you take advantage of it.”

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Cuba to Spain on amateur radio satellite FO-29

Hector Martinez CO6CBF - 640

Hector Martinez CO6CBF

Hector, CO6CBF reports on his successful transatlantic contact between Cuba and Spain using the amateur radio satellite FO-29.

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