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British National Committee for Space Research

The British National Committee for Space Research (BNCSR) was a Royal Society committee formed in December 1958. It was formed primarily to be Britain's interface with the newly formed Committee on Space Research (COSPAR).

History[edit]

In October 1958, the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) proposed to form a committee for space research. The Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) was the result of the proposal and first met in November 1958.^[1] Britain desired a new committee to interface with COSPAR and to organise British spaceflight activities after the International Geophysical Year (IGY).^[1][2] The Royal Society consolidated the Gassiot Committee's rocket and the National IGY Committee's artificial satellite subcommittees into the newly formed British National Committee for Space Research (BNCSR).^[3] The BNCSR was officially formed on 18 December 1958 and selected its members 12 February 1959.^[3][4] The 28-person committee was chaired by Harrie Massey and had W. V. D. Hodge as the physical secretary.^[4][5] The subcommittees that were to be incorporated into BNCSR submitted their final reports during the committee's first meeting on 4 March 1959 and were officially dissolved.^[6]

Subcommittees[edit]

The BNCSR formed three subcommittees: Tracking Analysis and Data Recovery (TADREC, chaired by J. A. Ratcliffe),^[7] Design for Experiments (DOE, chaired by Massey), and another to coordinate with the World Data Centre at Radio Research Station (RRS) at Slough (chaired by E. Bullard).^[8][6]

TADREC took over the work National IGY Committee's artificial satellite subcommittee.^[9]

DOE continued the work of the National IGY Committee's artificial satellite subcommittee.^[9] The new subcommittee had two initials tasks: to find artificial satellites to launch on and to consider if it was worth providing attitude control to Skylark for better scientific results.^[8]

See also[edit]

• List of astronomical societies

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

• Godwin, Matthew (2007). The Skylark Rocket: British Space Science and the European Space Research Organisation, 1957–1972. Editions Beauchesne. ISBN 9782701015118.
• Massie, Harrie; Robins, M. O. (1986). History of British Space Science. Cambridge University Press. pp. 106–108. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511898075. ISBN 9780511898075.
• King-Hele, D. (2005). A Tapestry of Orbits. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521017329.
• Millard, Douglas (April 2005). "An Overview of United Kingdom Space Activity 1957–1987" (PDF). Esa History Study Reports. The Netherlands: ESA. ISSN 1683-4704. HSR-36.
• Pounds, Ken (14 July 2010). "The Royal Society's formative role in UK space research". Notes and Records of the Royal Society. 64: S65–S76. doi:10.1098/rsnr.2010.0039. ISSN 1743-0178. S2CID 144418241.

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