The Group has a long heritage in building instrumentation to support the scientific studies of its members. These include remote sensing detectors for Earth observation science and magnetometer instruments for space and planetary field studies. The vast majority of experiments built by the group are designed for operation aboard spacecraft and aircraft. The group has built and operates instruments on-board many high profile ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) missions including Cluster, GERB, Cassini and Rosetta.

Both spaceborne and airborne instrumentation place special requirements on experiment developers to build detectors that are optimised for operation within harsh environments. Instruments need to be rugged, robust, reliable, radiation tolerant and low power. The group has considerable experience in developing low power fault tolerant control electronics for instruments and also has an active program of experiment miniaturisation, taking advantage of new technologies for both detectors and control and signal processing chains.

You can read more about our involvement in space and atmospheric missions in the links below: