The Times - UK (2022-05-28)

the times | Saturday May 28 2022 V2 39

News

“I’m sure the universe is full of intelli-
gent life,” the author Arthur C. Clarke
once said. “It’s just been too intelligent
to come here.”
In an effort to sway any aliens who
might have written us off, a British
space company is preparing to send a
message to a trio of potentially habita-
ble worlds.
The signal, designed to convey our
scientific aptitude, will be beamed from
Goonhilly Earth Station in Cornwall,

Anyone out there? We’re not as dim as you aliens may think

the world’s first privately owned deep-

space communications provider.d

The prize asset at Goonhilly is a giant

32-metre-wide antenna weighing more

than 400 tonnes. In recent months, it

has been communicating with Nasa

rovers on Mars and the European Space

Agency’s Gaia space telescope.

The new project will involve sending

a message to Trappist-1, a red dwarf star

in the constellation Aquarius that lies

roughly 40 light years away.

“My hope is that our messages will be

received by extraterrestrials who have

had Earth under surveillance for some

time, and they’re trying to make up

their minds whether to reveal their

existence,” said Dr Douglas Vakoch, the

president of the Messaging Extra-

terrestrial Intelligence organisation

(Meti), which is based in San Francisco

and has prepared the signal.

The message will include a represen-

tation of the periodic table, as well as

pieces of music. “The first task of inter-

stellar communication is to establish

common ground,” Vakoch said. “Any

aliens picking up our signals will be

good scientists. They’ll know what the

universe is made of. That’s our starting

point. The periodic table of elements

serves as our cosmic Rosetta Stone.”

Trappist-1 was an obvious target, he

added. “The system is home to not one,

but to at least three potentially habita-

ble exoplanets. These planets all orbit

within their star’s goldilocks zone, at a

distance where it’s not too hot and not

too cold but just the right temperature

to support liquid water, something

essential to life as we know it.”

The distances involved mean that if

life forms reply, it will be at least 80

years before we hear from them.

The wisdom of sending messages

into space has been questioned. “Meet-

ing an advanced civilisation could be

like Native Americans encountering

Columbus,” Stephen Hawking once

said. “That didn’t turn out so well.”

Vakoch argues that any intelligent

life will know about us already. “Since

the advent of radio a century ago, we’ve

been leaking electromagnetic signals

into space. In reality, we’ve already lit a

campfire that reveals our existence.”

Rhys Blakely Science Correspondent

Stanny’s

mission

Stanny’s

mismis

anny’s

ssiion

Cosmic Girl

Boeing 747-400

(previously)

8,265 flights

2.51m passengers Lower deck interior

stripped out Rocket attached under left wing

LauncherOne

1

2

4

5

Pilot tilts nose to 32° skywards

(close to the maximum the

aircraft can cope with) and

releases LauncherOne rocket

at 36,000ft

Cosmic Girl will

launch from Newquay

airport shortly before

midnight. It climbs to

30,000ft After a five-second

freefall, the first stage

engine accelerates

the rocket to more

than 8,000mph

Aircraft immediately

banks right, away

from rocket's path.

Cosmic Girl returns

to airport

32°

Two launch engineers

will monitor the rocket

from the upper deck

70ft long

ttlybbefoore 3 70,000lb weight

miiddi

After a fivve-second

freefall, the first sffllth tage

a

w

will monitorm the rocket to^ airpo

ached

wing

LauncherOne

fromm tthe upper deck

70 fft long

3 70 ,^0000 lb weight

Cosmic Girl

Satellites

Sea level

The second stage rocket

positions satellites

between 310 and

745 miles above

Earth

6.6 miles

310 miles

62 miles

SPACE

As one of the RAF’s leading test pilots,
Squadron Leader Matthew “Stanny”
Stannard is most at home in the
cockpits of Tornado and Typhoon
fighter jets, but this year he will take the
controls of a Boeing 747 on a mission
bound for outer space.
The first rocket launched into space
from British or indeed European soil
will take off from Newquay airport in
Cornwall, attached to the wing of a
Virgin Orbit airliner flown by Stannard,
ushering in the era of the British
spaceport.
Stannard, 33, from Milton Keynes,
will head over the Atlantic to perform
manoeuvres at speeds, angles and
G-forces that will push the 747 to its
limits. The rocket will detach mid-air
and blast into space to put its cargo of
miniature satellites into orbit, marking
an astronomical milestone for the UK’s
burgeoning space industry.
“It’s really exciting,” Stannard told
The Times. “Virgin is a British brand
and [this rocket is] being launched by a
British pilot from the UK. It’s going to
capture the imagination. It will put into
light that actually the UK has an in-
credible space sector, especially in the
satellite market.”
British-made satellites will no longer
have to be sent abroad for launch. Stan-
nard’s cargo will include two Ministry
of Defence satellites for monitoring
radio signals, a Scottish-made model
for tracking shipping and a Welsh-
made one to test whether items can be
manufactured in orbit.
It is a surprise that, at 6ft 4in, Stan-
nard can cram his frame into a fighter
jet’s cockpit. He was such a towering
figure by 16 that he feared he would be
too tall to fulfil his childhood dream of
flying RAF jets.
He never admitted that he asked a
cobbler to chop the heels off his shoes
and spent the morning before his first
RAF assessment on his feet, hoping it
might make him shrink.
It was worth it. After 2,500 hours of
flying, Stannard is set to make history.
He has been seconded from the RAF to
Virgin Orbit, one of Sir Richard Bran-
son’s space companies, until 2024. His
Boeing will carry a 20-metre, 31-tonne
rocket packed with shoebox-sized
CubeSat satellites, strapped under one
wing and named for their shape.
Shortly before midnight on a provi-
sional date of September 8, he will take
off from a runway usually used for holi-
daymakers, the first time space launch-
es have been integrated into a civilian
airport.
With backing from the UK Space
Agency and Cornwall council, the air-

port will be known as Spaceport Corn-

wall once it receives its licence from the

Civil Aviation Authority. Six more UK

spaceports are planned, including for

classic “vertical” launches.

It is a long way from his first flying ex-

perience, when his father Neil, who

worked in the police, packed a six-year-

old Matthew into his microlight and

took him into the skies. “I was captivat-

ed,” he said. “The whole way through

[childhood] I wanted to be a pilot. I al-

ways wanted to fly jets.”

Stannard had his wings by 19 and was

in a frontline unit by 21. He was flying

Tornados by 2011, went to test pilot

school in the United States in 2016 and

was testing Typhoons by 2017.

“It’s a 9G plane,” he said, meaning

that the force on a pilot’s body can

reach nine times that exerted by the

Earth’s gravity.

“It is brutal. The blood is being pulled

out of your brain and you’re struggling

Journey from Cornwall to the cosmos

The British pilot of a

rocket-launching 747

tells Kaya Burgess about

the strain the mission

will put on his body

to see because your vision is going grey.

You come back bruised.”

Stannard recognises that space

travel is opening up because of com-

mercial flights led by Branson, Elon

Musk and Jeff Bezos, but said: “There is

still a place for the military test pilot as

you get assurance on the way they han-

dle pressure.”

Stannard’s secondment to Virgin

Orbit was announced in 2019. With his

wife and two children, aged three and

four, Stannard lives in Long Beach, Cal-

ifornia. He has been in the cockpit for

two Virgin Orbit launches and will take

command of one for the first time in the

Mojave desert next month.

In September he will lead the launch

in Cornwall in a Boeing called Cosmic

Girl, chosen because it was Virgin’s

most reliable airliner, carrying 2.5 mil-

lion passengers over 14 years.

The rocket, LauncherOne, will be fu-

elled with liquid oxygen at a “crazy cold

temperature” with a 360m exclusion

zone for safety.

The opposite wing will be filled with

extra fuel to balance some of the rock-

et’s weight, “right on the limits for what

the plane will allow for imbalance”.

Late at night, Stannard, a co-pilot

and two launch engineers manning a

mission control station in the plane’s

former first-class cabin on the upper

deck will get the “go” for take-off.

He will head out over the Atlantic,

settling into an elliptical flight path

south of Ireland where the rocket’s “ter-

minal count” will begin. At 30,000ft

and 650mph, Stannard will pull the

plane up at 2G, “a crazy amount for an

airliner”, tilting the nose up at 32 de-

grees in a plane not usually designed to

tilt by more than five.

At 36,000ft a button will be pressed

and the rocket will detach, free-falling

for five seconds before igniting, giving

the plane time to get clear of any explo-

sion. The sudden loss of 31 tonnes from

its left wing will naturally make the

plane bank hard to the right and Stan-

nard will guide its dive to safety.

“There is a deep rumble,” Stannard

said of the rocket’s ignition. “You look

out the left window and it looks like the

sun, it’s so bright. You can feel it. She

comes up quickly past you and then she

just goes.”

Fuel will be pumped between the

wings to rebalance the plane and Stan-

nard will guide it back to Newquay. By

the time he lands, 90 minutes after

take-off, the rocket will have topped

8,000mph and be in space, delivering

its satellites into orbit 340 miles above

the Earth. “It’s so exciting that some kid

can go down and watch it get airborne

and an hour later can look on a map to

see it going overhead in space,” Stan-

nard said.

Does he hope to leave the Earth him-

self one day? “The European Space

Agency opened applications a year ago

[and] I’m too tall,” he said, recalling the

heels chopped from his shoes. “I was

wondering what else I could cut off in

order to scrape through.”

LUCY YOUNG FOR THE TIMES

Matthew Stannard

had to chop the heels

of his shoes to ensure

he met the height

rules for the RAF