Talk Series: The Interstellar Downlink
Date: 26th January 2021
Time: 8pm UTC (London time)
Presenter: John Davies
Livestream recording and slides
Accompanying Principium Article
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Summary
We aim to send probes to the nearest stars to report better than telescopes can. But without that reporting back, the sending of probes is pointless. The tiny probes we currently envisage face a challenge in reporting back which is at least as great as that of sending them. This talk introduces the problems and possible solutions to this challenge; this is the challenge of the Interstellar Downlink.
About the speaker
John Davies (BEng, MSc, MBCS, FBIS) is a retired software engineer and mobile telecom consultant. In his early career he was briefly part of the UK space sector where he worked on ground checkout for the Bluestreak vehicle and contributed to an early study for the Hubble telescope. He has a first degree in Electronics from the University of Liverpool and a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Manchester. He spent much of his career developing systems software for UK academic networks, based at the universities of Edinburgh and London, and in technical standards and technical sales in mobile telecoms at Hutchison Telecom and Sema Group. He joined i4is soon after its founding and his own retirement. He edits the quarterly Principium and coordinates outreach (to schools and scientific societies) and infrastructure (membership, app, web and email). He wrote The Interstellar Downlink - Principles and Current Work published in Principium 31, November 2020.
About the series
For more information on this series please visit our Talk Series page.
