Earlier this month we recorded an interview with the Space Boffins podcast about the smartphone satellite project we are currently working on, ‘Scream in Space’ (we’ll be posting more information about this in the coming weeks!).

The podcast is now out and you can listen to the CUSF interview here:

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Check out the full podcast, also featuring Space Shuttle engineer Matt Melis, over at Audioboo. To learn more about the STRaND nanosatellite, see here, and to find our about some of our previous Android experiments, take a look at this recent report from Squirrel 2.0.

The CUSF team have been building a rig to test a rocket motor whilst it is firing. The rig is designed to mechanically separate the X-Y-Z components of thrust, using a series of spring steel flexures. The 3 axes of thrust are then measured by 5 separate load cells to get the axial thrust, off-axis thrust and off-axis moments from the rocket motor.

This week, one of the measurement arms has had the flexures assembled and load cells bolted on. The main thrust bearing cage has also almost been finished.

After a long time working on it, we launched our new website yesterday. We hope the change makes the site more user friendly and easy to navigate. We’ll be adding more content over the next few weeks.

Thanks to everyone on the CU Spaceflight team who was involved with the new site, we think it has been worth it!

From the edge of space a tiny camera captures the dramatic curvature of the Earth, during a test flight that is one small step for Cambridge University students aiming to launch a rocket into space for under £1,000. - The Guardian

Cambridge University Spaceflight is a student run society founded in 2006 comprising undergraduates and postgraduates from many disciplines. We aim to develop the technology needed to reduce the cost of sub-orbital access to space for scientific research, in the form of high altitude balloon launches, designing rockets, and other related experiments.

Several CU Spaceflight members attended the first annual UKHAS conference in Islington, London this weekend.

Jon and Adam gave a talk introducing the society and the new Wombat radios and flight computers which are currently in development.

This was followed by Ed’s talk on the Squirrel smartphone flight computer project.