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Bristol Aero students attend Space Exploration Conference

2 August 2012

Final year students Roderic van Hoof and Fiona Hillier

Final year students Roderic van Hoof and Fiona Hillier

Final year students Roderic van Hoof and Fiona Hillier, with support from their academic supervisor Dr Lucy Berthoud, presented their research project on "Thermal and power design of a Europa and Ganymede penetrator probe" at the 9th Interplanetary Probe Workshop at ENSICA in Toulouse (16-22nd June 2012).

“This was a fantastic learning opportunity, with posters and presentations about cutting edge research from the international planetary probe community”, commented Roderic. There were many notable speakers, such as James Reuther and Luigi Colangeli from NASA and ESA respectively, as well as speakers from Japan’s JAXA and Russia’s IKI. The presentations covered past and present science missions to the Giant Planets, as well as discussions about sending UAV’s to Venus, Mars and Titan. The conference was a fantastic opportunity for the students to learn about the workings of national space programs and planetary exploration.

Spanning five days, the conference saw interaction of students, academia and industry from around the globe, research orientated discussions with industry professionals, and social interaction with Aerospace students from a wide range of leading universities. There was also an opportunity for personal discussion with Dr Robert Gowen the originator of the project idea.

Fiona summarised the whole event as being an “amazing experience” and a “chance to make a contribution to the future of space exploration”.