For the first time, The University of Dundee will host the Robert Cormack Bequest Meeting on Scottish Astronomy. This annual one-day conference aims to bring together Astronomers, Space Scientists and those with an interest in astronomy from across Scotland to present work and to view a broad selection of current happenings in Scottish astronomy. The meeting focuses primarily on research but also includes teaching and outreach work.

The PANGU enhancement project funded by ESA kicked off today. The 15 month project will extend the Lunar and Martian surface generation and rendering facilities of PANGU, improve the illumination, dust and sky rendering facilities, and prototype surface rover vehicle support facilities.

Staff from the Space Technology Centre answered questions on Space Exploration from Blairgowrie High School pupils in a live web chat session. Five pupils participated in a discussion that ranged from what astronauts eat in space, to the prospects of finding life on other planets, to what kind of cheese the moon is made of. All the participants enjoyed the exchange, which is the latest in a number of activities with Blairgowrie High including pupil visits to both the Space Systems Research Lab and the Satellite Receiving Station.

The University of Dundee had the honour of hosting the first International SpaceWire Conference, from 17 to 19 September 2007. The conference was organised by the Space Technology Centre, where the SpaceWire standard was written, in collaboration with the European Space Agency. Delegates attended from across the globe with representatives from the major space agencies and industry.

The Centre for Earth Observation Instrumentation (CEOI) is a new initiative jointly funded by NERC and the DIUS (formerly DTI). The aim of CEOI is to provide an excellent, internationally competitive Earth obsevation instrument and instrument technology research and development programme. Steve Parkes has been appointed to the CEOI steering committee.

The Space Technology Centre has won funding from Astrium SAS as part of the European Space Agency (ESA) HARVD study.

HARVD (High-integrity, Autonomous, multi-range RendezVous & Docking) aims to develop a European capability for autonomous orbital rendezvous and docking. It is intended that computer vision techniques will be used during the rendezvous process.

The Space Technology Centre at the University of Dundee was awarded a contract by the European Space Agency (ESA) to research various technologies for use onboard spacecraft.

The Space Technology Centre at the University of Dundee was opened on March 18th by Lord Sainsbury, Undersecretary of State for Science and Technology. The Space Technology centre brings together the Satellite Receiving Station at Dundee, the Space Systems Research Group and related commercialisation activities.

Scientists and engineers from Japan today visited the Space Systems Research Group at the University of Dundee and used equipment from STAR-Dundee Ltd to test their SpaceWire equipment. JAXA, the Japanese Space Agency, are planning to use SpaceWire technology on the Bepi Colombo mission to Mercury, and the NeXT Xray telescope.