The challenge of space

The dawn of the space age in 1957 was as historic in world terms as the discovery of the Americas, the voyage of the Beagle or the first flight by the Wright brothers. Indeed, the space age contains elements of each of these events. It is an age of exploration of new places, an opportunity to acquire new knowledge and ideas and the start of a technological revolution whose future benefits can only be guessed at. For these reasons, and others, space travel has captured the public's imagination.

Unfortunately, access to the space environment is not cheap either in terms of money or in fractions of the working life of an engineer or scientist. The design of space instruments should therefore only be undertaken if the scientific or engineering need cannot be met by other means, or, as sometimes happens, if instruments in space are actually the cheapest way to proceed, despite their cost. Designing instruments, or spacecraft for that matter, to work in the space environment places exacting requirements on those involved. Three issues arise in this kind of activity which add to the difficulty, challenge and excitement of carrying out science and engineering in space. First, it is by no means straightforward to design highly sophisticated instruments to work in the very hostile physical environment experienced in orbit. Secondly, since the instruments will work remotely from the design team, the processes of design, build, test, calibrate, launch and operate, must have an extremely high probability of producing the performance required for the mission to be regarded as a success.