Maynooth company's computer products on board Mars Express

Ireland doesn't have a space agency but it does have a space programme largely through participation by Irish companies in missions organised by NASA, ESA and other organisations. Among the most active is Space Technology Ireland Ltd (STIL) headed by founder and managing director, Prof Susan McKenna-Lawlor. STIL has won a contract to design sophisticated hardware and software for one of the seven scientific instruments selected to fly on the new Mars Express spacecraft. Contracts between ESA and Matra Marconi Space to build the £60 million (€76 million) Euro satellite, to be launched in 2003, were signed a few weeks ago. Its mission is to discover whether there is subsurface water on the Red Planet or any sign of past or present live.

The Irish company is based on the NUI Maynooth campus, is involved in the ASPERA experiment. It is one of a number of key contractors lead by the Swedish Institute of Space Physics. This experiment will be studying the atmosphere of Mars and should give insights into its evolution, according to Prof McKenna-Lawlor.

Flying advanced experiments to exotic locations such as Mars is nothing new for the professor or her company. Founded in 1986, STIL experiments have flown on dozens of high-profile satellites such as SOHO the solar observatory, WIND, a near earth observatory and Phobos a Russian mission to Mars and its moons.

"We were founded to build hardware and software for space applications and to provide a consultancy service to the space industry through the design, construction and testing of advanced electronic instruments," she explained.

It has contributed to missions flown by NASA, ESA, and the Russian and Japanese space agencies. One of its recent contracts was for the Gravity Probe B or Relativity Mission which will fly in 2000. It has just sent an instrument to Stanford University in California for this flight which will test predictions in Einstein's theory of general relativity .

"We submitted a proposal and were in worldwide competition for the contract. It was awarded to us on the basis of the reliability and high quality of our technical designs," she said.

Building for the space industry is a specialised activity. Moving parts and electronics on board a satellite must be able to survive powerful vibrations during launch and then repeated baking and freezing in the vacuum of space. Satellites cost millions of dollars to design, build, test and launch so planners have to get it right first time. There is no opportunity to go up and fix something that doesn't work, Prof McKenna-Lawlor explained.

For this reason the electronics which control experiments on satellites must have a lot of "in-built intelligence to recover" if something goes wrong, she said. Cosmic rays from the sun and deep space can cause internal damage to sensitive electronics and these devices must be able to survive damage and then re-configure to re-establish normal operation.

"Our experience is primarily based on fault-tolerant and high-integrity systems for on-board processing of information from satellite instruments," she said. Onboard systems have to survive long periods in the hostile space environment. In the case of ESA'S Giotto Mission to Halley's comet which carried the national instrument EPONA for which Prof McKenna-Lawlor was scientific and technical team leader, there was an eight month flight to the comet and then after the encounter it was put into hibernation for four years. It was then switched on for an Earth "flyby" and then once again put to sleep for two more years before being switched on again for an encounter with another comet. EPONA was one of only two onboard experiments to take data at the Earth as well as at the two comets.

A similar challenge will occur during ESA's Rosetta mission. This is an ambitious attempt to fly to Comet Wirtanen, put the Rosetta spacecraft into orbit and then drop a lander onto its surface. The launch is planned for 2003 but it will fly for eight years before reaching Wirtanen and then orbit for a year before sending down the lander.

STIL is responsible for a "mission-critical" aspect, the hardware and software that will allow the orbiter and lander to communicate with one another.

STIL is a privately-owned company and has no financial connections to NUI Maynooth which does, however, allow it to operate from a location on campus. In return, the company has sponsored a number of research projects and provides summer jobs for students from the physics and computer science departments.

The past few years have seen the company expand its activities, using expertise gained from building for the harsh environment of space and reapplying this to hazardous working environments on Earth. "The state-of-the-art technology we have in house for space is being used for solving problems on Earth," Prof McKenna-Lawlor said. It has customers in the US and across Europe in areas including the automotive and medical industries and firms that require electronic design consultancy. Recent work involved the development of an airflow controller for hospital patients affected by acute lung injuries, she explained. About half the company's turnover now comes from Earth-based design and testing work, although it remains committed to involvement in satellite and spacecraft instrumentation.