All language subtitles for BBC.The.Sky.at.Night.2023.The.UK.Space.Race.1080p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org

The UK space industry is booming,

with a huge income of £17.5 billion.

We are now one of the biggest
satellite-building nations

in the world.

And the race is still on for
the first orbital rocket launch

from British soil.

This month, the Sky at Night team
are investigating the incredible

science and engineering that's
helping us to blast into space.

I'll learn how to build a rocket
with a company whose aim

is to get into orbit next year.

This is the real thing.

Yeah, this'll be going to space.

I'll learn how our most important
satellites will be exposed

to the dangers of space,
in a brand-new test facility.

This looks amazing.

It's such a treat to be in here.

Radio astronomer Professor Danielle
George discovers a sci-fi solution

to the impact of the industry
on our night skies.

We will match the rotation of
the debris and then we will safely

go and capture with the claw.

And our in-house stargazing
expert Pete Lawrence tells us

what we can all see this month.

Welcome to The Sky at Night.

Space, as they say, is hard.

With something as complex
and as powerful as a rocket,

there's lots to go wrong...

..as demonstrated in January
by Virgin Orbit...

The historic rocket mission launch
from Cornwall last night

failed after the rocket LauncherOne
suffered what Virgin Orbit

called an anomaly.

..or the dramatic end to
SpaceX's giant Starship in April.

Starship just experienced
a rapid unscheduled disassembly.

These challenges haven't stopped
an increasingly wide range

of companies, enthusiasts
and dreamers from trying

to build their own highway
to the stars.

I've come to Cumbernauld to visit
a start-up called Skyrora.

Wow! It's impressive.
Yeah, so this is where...

Euan Clark is the project's
team lead.

He hopes they'll be the first
to launch into orbit from the UK.

So why are you building rockets
here in Scotland?

Currently, the satellites
will need to be transported

to America or somewhere else
to be launched,

so building the rockets here
means we can launch from the UK.

Another advantage is the orbits
we want to go into

are ideal for launch from the north
of Scotland.

So that's into sort of polar orbits
around the earth?

Polar orbits pass over the Earth's
polar regions from north to south.

This is good for Earth observation
satellites, as they can observe

most of the Earth's surface
over a 24-hour period.

And where are we on that journey
to orbit?

We have tested the third stage,
second stage.

The next step is just to test
the first stage,

and then...before bolting it
all together, ready for launch

sometime later next year.

This is the real thing, right? Yeah.

This is going to be your first
attempt at orbit. Yeah.

This will be going to space.

Should we take a look at the rocket?
Yeah, let's go for a walk.

The rocket is split into
three stages.

I don't think I've ever walked round
a rocket before.

The top of the rocket
is this third stage.

This is where the satellite is held
inside a payload fairing.

This is the payload fairing.

And this is where the satellite
will sit.

So this is the most important part
for our customers.

Each stage has its own engines.

So it's its own mini spacecraft,
basically. Yeah.

So this is what'll take the
satellite and deliver it into orbit.

The middle part of the rocket,
the second stage,

gets the rocket into space.

And then here we have an adaptor
that connects the second stage

with the third stage.

The second stage is clearly
much meatier. Yeah.

So it's 2.2 metres in diameter
and around four to five metres long,

and it's got one 70 kilonewton
engine on it,

to take it just to the edge
of space.

And finally, it's the first stage
which isn't on the factory floor yet.

This bottom section gets the rocket
off the launchpad.

The first stage would be behind me,

and that'll have nine
70 kilonewton engines on it.

And that reaches about
14 metres long,

so it almost doubles the length
of the rocket.

You realise it's a big thing when
you're standing next to it like this.

Yeah, it'll be awesome to see it

once it's stood up
right on the launchpad. Yeah.

And when it works. When, yeah.

Some of the engines
on the first stage

are undergoing testing in the lab.

So this is our engine bay.
That's where we're manufacturing,

at the moment, three of
our 70 kilonewton engines.

Why do you have
these different stages

that produce the whole rocket?

It's more efficient to do it
in stages.

The hardest bit is to get off
the ground and get

through Earth's atmosphere.
So it takes a lot of fuel.

So once we've burnt off
most of that,

we want to get rid of that weight

and also the nine engines
in the first stage.

We want to lose that so that
it's not holding us back.

So we separate, drop the first stage
and then light the second stage.

And then once the second stage
gets closer to orbit,

we can drop that as well and get rid
of that unnecessary weight.

So you're sort of carrying
only what you need

for each stage of the journey? Yeah.

This first stage
is the most powerful.

The nine engines have to get
the entire 55,000-kilo weight

of the rocket off the ground.

What are we looking at here?

We've got the propellants
that come in through the top,

through the system, the combustion
in the chamber,

and then out the nozzle
providing the thrust.

So fuel comes out that way, ignites,
and then that heads up?

Yep. That's the plan.
And what fuel do these engines use?

So they use a combination
of kerosene and HDP.

We need the two propellants. We need
the fuel and we need oxygen.

Because in space,
there's just a vacuum, no oxygen,

we need to take our own.
So that's where the HDP comes in.

What makes those a good fit
for these rockets?

So there's a few factors.

They're nontoxic and non-cryogenic,

so they can be stored
on the launchpad.

So it gives us a better
weather window.

So if we're ready to launch,
we fuel the rocket.

We can put it on pause for a couple
of days until the weather subsides

and we can get launching again.
This is beginning to sound very much

like a rocket that can take off
from Scotland.

Yeah, cos you never know what
the weather's going to be like here.

What are the things that can go wrong
when you're thinking about

designing an engine
and sending it off into space?

Everything needs to communicate
together. So for launch,

we need the ground system
to communicate

with the rocket on the pad,
and then hand over control, so...

So it's flying itself essentially?
That's one of the hardest bits.

Once the first stage has got
the rocket off the ground,

it's the second stage that carries
the satellite payload

through the rest of the atmosphere
and into space.

But the challenge is keeping it
on course.

Getting the rocket off the launchpad
is only the start

of an engineer's worries.

One of the things to think about
is keeping the rocket pointing

in the right direction.

In the old days, that meant flying
something like this gyroscope

which, if I spin it
and then leave it,

if I tilt it, it will always try
and come back to the same direction.

These days, sensors on board
the rocket keep track

of how it's moving, report to
the onboard computer

and make necessary adjustments
to the engines if needed.

Finally, stage three of the rocket
actually delivers

the satellite payload to
its final destination.

Euan is giving me a closer look
at a test model.

It's impressive.

So this is 2.2 metres in diameter,
and it's not actually the full size.

There's another metre and a half
to go in the bottom of this,

so it'll almost touch the ceiling.

This will protect the satellite,
control the environment around it,

and then this drops off
just before orbit.

So what are the advantages of
this sort of third stage

in getting satellites to orbit?

A lot of rockets
have two stages, so...

But with our third one, it's
the equivalent of a taxi service.

It'll take you exactly
where you want to go.

So we can have a lot more accuracy
when putting satellites

into the different orbits.

The UK is still waiting
to launch a satellite into orbit

from its own soil, but it has used
its own rocket to launch a satellite

into orbit from another land.

And that rocket was the Black Arrow.

The Black Arrow rocket was proposed
in the 1960s.

The government wanted to see
if it could build a rocket based

on existing British technology
that was originally designed

to launch intercontinental
ballistic missiles.

The launch site chosen
was the Woomera Rocket Range

in South Australia.

After two demonstration flights,

Black Arrow carried its first
satellite payload in September 1970.

But the second stage
failed to pressurise,

and the payload was lost.

In July 1971, the program
was cancelled on economic grounds,

but the latest version of
Black Arrow

had already been shipped
to Australia,

so they decided to go ahead
with a final launch.

This launch was successful,

and Black Arrow placed the Prospero
satellite into Earth's orbit.

The UK became the sixth nation
to launch its own satellite

into orbit using its own rocket.

It also became the first nation

to cancel its successful
launch program.

Instead, the focus turned
to the satellites.

And 50 years on, the UK
has a booming satellite

and space industry.

And it's something I'm really proud
to be part of.

I've spent most of my career
working on satellites -

missions such as Aeolus,

designed to measure the wind speed
through the Earth's atmosphere,

to the JWST, the largest
space telescope ever built.

I'm really passionate about
what satellites out there can do

for us right here on Earth.

Until now, the UK has never
been able to test its own

fully-assembled
large scale satellites.

But this is all about to change.

After five years and £116 million,

the national satellite test facility

is due to finish construction
in just a few months' time.

And I'm getting an early preview.

This beast here
is a satellite test unit.

Now, it looks absolutely enormous,

but it's about half the size
of the sort of satellite

that will be tested in this facility.

When I worked on satellites
in the past, they were usually

shipped off to Europe for testing.

The fact that we have these
facilities right here in the UK

is really ground-breaking.

Now, these tests are crucial,
cos when a satellite is up there

in space, there's no going back
to fix it.

I know from personal experience
that this can be quite terrifying.

Something you've poured your heart
and soul into is rigorously tested,

almost to destruction, but not quite.

One of the first questions is,

"Will your satellite survive
the launch?"

So I'm starting at the most
nerve-racking part of the facility,

the vibration chamber.

Program manager Sean Stewart
is giving me privileged access.

I want to talk to you about
sort of the violence

of getting things into space.

How do we ensure that
they will survive that?

So we have two shakers here,
a vertical shaker and a horizontal.

So when you say a shaker, well,

is that literally what you're doing?
Shaking? Quite literally.

The satellites, which weigh about
seven tonnes and are anything

up to eight metres tall,
they're experiencing 1.5G.

We replicate all the vibrations
from launch right the way

through to separation
and placement into the orbit.

But there's also quite
a strong noise element.

I mean, I've felt sort of the noise
of a take-off within my lungs,

and that can cause damage, too,
which people aren't often aware of.

Absolutely. As the rocket's going up
through the atmosphere,

the skin of the rocket starts to act
like the walls of a big bass drum,

and that can set up standing waves
and harmonics within your satellite,

and you can start to cause damage.

So what we do here is we build
a stack of speakers,

like you'd find at Glastonbury or a
rock concert, from floor to ceiling,

and then we effectively play music
to our satellite.

We play all the sounds that
it will experience at the levels

that it will experience.

A Boeing 747 with all of its
engines, that's 140 decibels.

In here, we'll go to 146 decibels.

At the NSTF,

they'll be able to simulate
the vibration and noise

of the specific rocket
used for the launch,

from Ariane 5 to the Falcon 9.

This looks amazing.

Not many people get to come inside
our vacuum chamber, that's for sure.

The next step for the satellite
is the thermal vacuum chamber.

We've seen the violence of launch,
but once it gets into space,

the satellite is still in
a hostile environment.

We're talking about
extreme temperatures and vacuum.

So how does this facility
actually simulate that?

What we simulate here
is outer space.

We bring the satellite in.

We've translated it through
90 degrees, so it's now horizontal.

We shut the door and then we start
to suck the air out.

How about temperature?
What range does it do?

So we go down to about
-180 degrees centigrade,

and that allows the satellite
to shrink and contract

because it's cold.

But we can also heat up to
plus 130 degrees centigrade,

so considerably on boiling water,
and we can do both at the same time.

So you can have cold spots
and hot spots.

I suppose that's important
because sometimes you have sunshine

hitting one side of your satellite
and not the other,

and you need to know that it will be
thermally stable in that environment.

Very much so.

So, cooling and heating,
how is that done here?

We have 190,000 litres
of liquid nitrogen

stored outside the building.

And in any 24-hour period,

we will use about 90,000 litres
to cool this place down.

Wow! Impressive!

But that sounds pricey.

Everything in space is pricey.

This facility not only is expensive
to be in on a daily basis,

you'll probably be in here
for about 30...

Between 30 and 60 days,
possibly longer.

Last stop - the electromagnetic
compatibility facility.

This is the EMC test facility,

and it's designed to make sure
that your satellite

can communicate effectively
from space.

We're in an electrically neutral
zone, or a Faraday cage,

and that's achieved by having
copper plates in the floor,

the ceiling and the walls around us.

It's a great place to test
an antenna, to see what the antenna

is putting out and also
what it's receiving.

The walls are covered with
over 40,000 of these blue foam cones.

They absorb the signals.

That means if you want to test
your new, super-secure spy satellite,

this is the place to do it,

because anyone out there
won't know what you're up to.

If your satellite makes it through
this final stage unscathed,

then it's probably ready for space.

Space is a hostile environment,

which is why these satellites
need to be tested thoroughly.

And one of the potential hazards
is the sun.

Stargazing expert Pete Lawrence
is here to tell us

how we can observe Earth's star
this month.

As we head into summer,
the height of the late morning sun

means this is a great time
to try out some solar photography.

This summer is particularly good

because we're approaching
solar maximum.

This is a period of peak activity
that happens around every 11 years,

when the poles of the sun's
magnetic field switch places.

It creates some really exciting
phenomena, but it's important

to capture them safely.

You should never look directly
at the sun, of course,

and you should never point
any astronomical instruments at it,

unless you're using certified
solar safety filters.

As well as providing safety,

these filters help us to see
the sun's features more clearly.

I'm starting with a relatively
inexpensive white light filter

and some imagery I managed
to capture earlier,

when the sun was still shining.

So here you can see the sun's
visible surface.

I can also see some sunspots.

And sunspots represent regions
on the sun's surface

where you have a high concentration
of magnetic field lines.

Next, I'm trying a calcium K filter.

And this is where things start
to get a little bit more pricey.

So the view, now, that I've got
shows the sunspots really clearly.

But what really stands out
are the bright patches

around the sunspot groups
and across the sun's disc.

And those are known as plage.

Plage are associated with high
concentrations of magnetic fields.

Finally, I'm going to use
a hydrogen alpha filter.

This allows us to see filaments
and prominences, arcs of plasma

being moved by the magnetic fields.

And if I move to the edge
of the sun,

here, I've got a filament.

And I can see that that filament
extends beyond the edge of the sun,

so it's turning into a prominence.

And amateurs actually named that -
they called it a filaprom.

But they look absolutely amazing.

The longest period of daylight,
the summer solstice, will take place

on the 21st of June in the UK.

For many of us, the nights
don't get fully dark.

This actually helps us to see
brighter patterns of stars

more clearly, as the faintest stars
are hidden.

These patterns are known
as asterisms,

and our summer skies
are full of them.

At the end of June, the summer
triangle moves into position,

formed by the three bright stars
Vega, Deneb and Altair.

The star Deneb marks the top
of the Northern Cross,

and the summer Milky Way
appears to flow through it.

Follow the Milky Way south
and we can see a familiar shape.

This asterism is known
as the teapot,

part of the constellation
Sagittarius.

And finally, to complete the scene,
a small group of stars slightly

northeast of the teapot form
an asterism known as the teaspoon.

If you manage to photograph
any of the summer asterisms

using either your phone or
your camera, we'd love to see them.

Send them to
The Sky at Night Flickr,

and we'll pick our favourites and
feature them in next month's show.

And since we've last been on air,
some of you have been sending us

your incredible images
of the lunar occultation of Jupiter.

But the stars are becoming harder
to observe in our night skies.

And one reason for this is
the increasing number of satellites.

I've come to the Glasgow
Science Centre to speak

to Regius Professor Andy Lawrence
from the University of Edinburgh.

He's one astronomer who's been
particularly outspoken

about the threat of the expanding
space industry to our night skies.

When did you first start
thinking about this problem

that satellites cause astronomers?

Well, for me, there was
a kind of awakening,

I would say, in late 2019.

Like a lot of other astronomers,
I saw an image

from the Dark Energy Survey which
had these streaks going across it.

That kind of shocked me.

So what are we seeing on the dome?
What are these stripes?

Well, this is the tracks
of the 100 brightest satellites.

So this isn't what you'd see
with your eye at any one time.

It's kind of what you might see
if you were able to integrate,

on the sky, the whole night.

Yeah, they cover the whole sky.
They cover the whole sky.

But in reality,
there's a lot more than 100.

The number of active satellites has
increased from around 2,000 in 2018

to more than 5,000 today.

So how does the presence
of these satellites affect astronomy

that we do from the ground?

The big problem is...

..our current obsession
is with wide field surveys.

So with a big area of sky, there's
more of a chance of a satellite

streaking across
during your exposure.

One of the things that made me
realise how big a problem this was

was seeing a satellite streak not in
an image taken from the ground,

but from the Hubble Space Telescope.

And even Hubble, which is in space,
gets affected by this.

Oh, yeah, yeah. So both of the
Starlink satellites, for instance,

and Hubble Space Telescope
are in low Earth orbit.

Satellites can pass within
a few hundred kilometres of Hubble.

Satellite trails on Hubble images
doubled between 2002 and 2021.

And it's not just imagery
that's affected.

Satellites also create
huge interference problems

for radio astronomers.

What's the solution?

If you're in charge for 24 hours,
what would you do

that would fix this problem?

Well, the solution is regulation.

It has to be about trying to
work out what a sensible capacity

is for low-Earth orbit.

Although I started from
professional worry about the effect

on science, and I've come to see
this as an environmental problem.

Up there in space, until recently,
it's been almost pristine,

and that's been very beautiful
and very important.

And we're in danger
of spoiling that.

So I'm now... I'm a space
environmentalist, Chris.

I've always thought the night sky
is a little bit of wilderness

that's right there, that you can just
go out and look at

from wherever you are.

And I think, never mind the effects
on professional astronomy,

if the number of satellites increases
and we lose that,

and we're looking out
not at the cosmos

but at stuff we've put there,
it'll just be very sad.

It isn't just active satellites
that are causing problems.

Dead satellites, and the pieces
of debris they create,

are fast becoming an urgent issue.

A few months ago, on March 14th,
the International Space Station

had to make an urgent manoeuvre
to avoid a passing chunk of debris.

It was the second time that month
that Mission Control had

had to tell the station to dodge and
weave to keep the astronauts safe.

In the past, astronauts have had to
shelter in the station's lifeboats

as their home passed through
clouds of orbital debris.

The point is this - low-Earth orbit
is increasingly crowded.

Keeping track of the thousands
of active satellites run by SpaceX

and all the rest is one thing,
but it's fragments of material

from defunct missions
that really cause a problem,

made worse by missile tests run by
the US, Russia, China and India,

each of which has blown up
a satellite in orbit,

creating thousands of pieces
of shrapnel each time.

Man down!

You might remember this
from the 2013 film Gravity,

where the astronauts are interrupted
in repairing

the Hubble Space Telescope
by a deadly debris cloud.

But this scenario isn't
as farfetched as it sounds.

We're currently tracking
23,000 pieces of debris

larger than ten centimetres, each of
which moves in its orbit faster

than a speeding bullet.

And the high-velocity collisions
that they cause can be devastating,

and they can cause more problems
by creating more debris.

This is the so-called
Kessler Syndrome, a runaway process

in which each collision
leads to more fragments,

which cause more collisions, until
the entire orbital space is filled

and it becomes impossible to use.

Bad news if you want that holiday
in a 21st-century space hotel,

or if you depend on satellites
for navigation or communication.

The solution? It's time we cleaned up
our act in space.

Someone who is
particularly interested

in possible space junk solutions
is Professor Danielle George.

She's a radio frequency engineer

and has worked on incredible
telescopes around the world.

Now I work on both sides -

radio astronomy, which we know
is being negatively affected

by the excess of satellites
and space junk,

but I've also worked on creating
satellites that are launched

to unravel some of the greatest
scientific mysteries.

But it's these satellites that,
once they're launched

and they've done their work,
are left in space

and add to the problem.

I'm visiting a company that's
developing technology to help solve

the space junk problem.

Valentin Valhondo
is the program manager.

This is incredible.

So, Valentin, just tell us
about space junk.

How big a problem is it?

So the way I like to explain
the space industry nowadays,

this is - if you imagine a highway
network of cars moving very fast,

over the last 60 years,

we have been using it without any
tow truck services or maintenance.

We are currently developing
a mission for the UK Space Agency.

In that mission, we will launch
a spacecraft,

and we will plan to remove
two UK satellites from orbit.

The company are developing
a satellite dubbed the Claw.

The idea is that it will use
a pincer motion

to collect pieces of debris
in outer space.

And so what are you testing here?

So, here, we're testing one of
the critical phases of the mission.

We are testing the last approach
before capture.

On one side, we have the cameras
that we will have on the spacecraft.

Uh-huh. And on the other side,
in that robot,

we have a realistic presentation
of the debris

that we will want to capture.

Pieces of debris will be spinning
in orbit at 28,000km per hour.

The claw needs to accurately
track their motion,

and it has to do this
in the darkness of space.

So how do you determine where
the debris is when you're in space?

The sun will illuminate the target.

But it's a very directional light.

It only comes from the side.

We may even have
too-strong reflections...

Yeah. ..that may blind our cameras,

so our algorithms will need to be
able to reconstruct the whole motion

of the spacecraft, only by
looking at the part

that is illuminated. Yeah.

After we have determined
how the debris is spinning,

we will compute a safe trajectory
to capture it.

We will synchronise the motion.

We will have a propulsion system
that will fire small thrusters,

and then we will safely go
and capture with the claw.

So you're literally sort of
emulating how the satellite

is moving in space to capture it?
That's correct, yes.

If the claw doesn't
synchronise perfectly

with the spinning space junk,

it could break off more pieces
of debris, making the problem worse.

Once its prey is safely captured,

it can drag it down
to a lower orbit,

where the debris will burn up
in the Earth's atmosphere.

I'm really impressed with
what companies like this

are trying to do.

Earth's orbit allows us to study
our planet, to send communications

and so much more.

And it's important that
we do it sustainably,

so that future generations
can enjoy its benefits too.

That's all we've got time for.

But join us next month,
when we're meeting the man

who's trying to talk to aliens.
Goodnight.