New LunchSat team for 2010-2011

With the new influx of graduates on the Graduate Development Programme in October 2010, the 2010-2011 LunchSat team has been selected and has had the first meeting of the year on 11th October 2010. The video conference session involved the whole team being able to meet the new starters, followed by laboratory and ground station visits. There are also changes to the organisation to streamline the previous 14 sub-systems down into 6 key areas: Project Management, OBC, Communications, Payload, Platform, and Operations. This is expected to help to reduce the time spent in meetings and to enable the project to cope better with team members being unavailable at certain times due to illness or other work commitments. By having more people associated with each old sub-system, the workload can be better spread around each key area depending on priority. The main objectives this year is to aim for the cubesat platform to be ready for final flight testing by the start of 2012, significant payload development and a radio transmission between the Stevenage and Portsmouth ground stations via satellite.

All-new lineup announced for 2010

It is with great pleasure (and relief!) that the current Lunchsat team is able to welcome its new members – each of which are taking the proud commitment to join our project as we rocket into 2010 with challenging ambitions.

The new graduates have been individually selected to join the unique Graduate Development Programme (GDP) and Direct Entry Graduate (DEG) schemes of EADS Astrium, both serving as the next logical step from university as they allow the graduates to develop their skills over a two-year period.

DEGs can gain valuable contacts and accelerated experience over the two years in a single department. The GDP enables graduates to gain a wider portfolio of skills and experience as they are encouraged to partake in a minimum of four six-month rotational placements, to fully understand and appreciate the Astrium business in Stevenage, Portsmouth and continental Europe.

Each new Astrium graduate that has chosen Lunchsat as their auxiliary project will be bringing their own experiences, qualities and talents to the initiative, with this year's intake representing backgrounds from both technology and business in equal measure. They join the current members of the team at an exciting turning point for the project, as we start looking forward to an imminent launch and in doing so, commission a new Operations subsystem in readiness to handle post-launch attitude and maintenance of the Lunchsat nanosatellite in space.

Select project members from the previous 2008-09 year are set to become the new technical experts and subsystem leads as they assume advisory roles for the new graduates.

The all-new lineup for 2009-10 sees Matthew Ashworth (Portsmouth Groundstation), Alex Buick (Operations), Billy Chan (Payload: Imager), Martin Discors (Payload: Imager), Perry Hinneh (Mechanical), Goodwell Kapfunde (Stevenage Groundstation), Christopher Lord (ADCS), Daniel Ludlow (Communications), Fatou Mbaye (Systems), Timothy Mead (Power), Ian Miles (OBC), Stephen Pulker (Project Management, OBC), Natasha Pushkin (Thermal), Nicolas Sarda (Stevenage Groundstation), Mauricio Molas Serrano (Portsmouth Groundstation), Thomas Stuttard (Systems, Power), Andrew White (Communications) and Benjamin Yarwood (Mechanical) join the team.

They join golden oldies and those dedicated few continuing their roles from last year: Nicholas Carter (ADCS), Martin Garland (Payload: Imager), Stephen Jones (Portsmouth Groundstation), Edward Nelson (Thermal), Gurmeet Singh Pawar (Power), Julia Ryan (Mechanical), Jason Stones (Media) and Jonathan Wynn (Payload: Imager), headed up by project lead Nick Fishwick and overseen by project champion, Ronan Wall.

You can keep up-to-date with this year's exciting Lunchsat developments on this blog and on our website at http://www.lunchsat.eu/. Stay tuned and follow our ambitions as we move forward into 2010 and evolve our nanosatellite project from a hobbyist lunchtime activity to a launch-ready payload!

Lunchsat is a unique graduate initiative of EADS Astrium – a mission to build a cube nanosatellite that carries the minimum of what is needed to fly and operate in space. Find out more about Lunchsat and the new team for 2010; space company EADS Astrium and its graduate entry programmes.

Kim Mitchell: Multi-Talented

Another victim for the profile sections...

Name: Kim Mitchell

Role within Lunchsat: Portsmouth Payload Lead, Member of Portsmouth Ground Station, Systems, ADCS, Power, Thermal

Role within Astrium: Engineer in Stress and Thermal Group

Nationality: Canadian-Portuguese

Most favourite type of lunch: Free lunch ('I'm not very picky')

Least favourite type of lunch: Paid lunch :)

Hopes: 'This lovely sunny weather will last a long time.'

Fears: 'Another rainy summer.'

Why did you join Lunchsat? 'To learn something new.'

What do you hope Lunchsat will achieve? 'Launch of equipment and a working satellite.'

Our Dear Leader

After much bugging and hassling, here is the first of the profiles about people working on Lunchsat. It was appropriate to go for the jugular, so here it is.

Name: Ronan Wall

Role within Lunchsat: Project Management, Power

Role within Astrium: Mission Systems Engineer in the Science group.

Nationality: 'Irish, thank God.'

Most favourite type of lunch: 'Is there anything better than a grand pub lunch on a cold winter day after walking over a few fields to get there?'

Least favourite type of lunch: 'A working lunch when all they are interested in is talking in detail about a technology area that I know little about. Grim.'

Hopes: Ireland to win the 6 nations rugby *some* day.

Fears: Ireland losing to England in any year of aforementioned tournament.

Why did you join Lunchsat? 'To get hands on experience and own part of a satellite. Ironically, I've gravitated into managing the thing so there's less chance for hands on! However, some power subsystem action is keeping me entertained...'

What do you hope Lunchsat will achieve? 'Hopefully, it will allow junior engineers to own a satellite subsystem early in their careers, that it will provide education and development for both junior and mentor engineers, and we will get a fully integrated and tested satellite that is ready to launch. Finally getting the satellite to a launch pad is the ultimate goal. Anything after that is a bonus...'