Cafe Scientifique Henley

CAFE Scientifique Henley presents “How to stop the sky falling on our heads” on Wednesday, March 16 (7pm for 7.30pm).

This event can be enjoyed in person at Henley Hockey Club, Reading Road (maximum 40 attendees) or via Zoom.

About 2,000 satellites orbit the Earth, alongside 3,000 redundant ones and more than 31,000 other pieces of space junk.

On December 3 last year, the International Space Station had to perform an emergency manoeuvre in orbit to avoid a potentially fatal collision with a fragment of a US launch vehicle.

But all is not lost. The UK is host to a number of fast-growing space hardware companies. Two of these, Astroscale UK and Oxford Space Systems, are developing and testing the craft and equipment needed to remove the most threatening pieces of debris from lower Earth orbit.

Our speaker is Dr Michael Warner, director of the Centre for Local Content Innovation (managing net-zero policies with industrial strategy).

He is a private collector of rare Apollo and Soviet-era mission artefacts (a few specimens will be available for the in-person audience to see).

Recently, the collection acquired one of the largest pieces of space debris ever to return to Earth that now lies in private hands, namely 35kg of the heat shield of Salut 7, which fell over Argentina in 1991.

As a way to illustrate the origin of space debris and the risk it poses, Dr Warner will tell the story of Salut 7 and how part of it came to be in his garden.

He will go on to explain how Astroscale UK and Oxford Space Systems are contributing to the sustainability of space exploration, executing orbital manoeuvres of specialist docking craft and launching prototype harpoons to capture and ultimately destroy space debris.

Dr Warner, who has a PhD from Imperial College, is a lecturer in environmental management at UCL and research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute. You can log in using Zoom from 7pm for the talk at 7.30pm, followed by a break at 8.15pm and questions and answers at 8.30pm.

During the talk please mute your device and turn off your video so no background interference spoils the session. To ask a question, please use the chat icon. We usually answer all questions in the order they are presented.

From 7pm to 7.30pm, you can leave mics and videos on if you wish to talk to the audience or someone specifically. At the end everyone will be unmuted so we can applaud.

To register, email
cafescihenley@gmail.com

David Dickie