When: 6 pm for 6.30pm start Wednesday15 October 2025
Venue: Lvl4, 385 Queens Street, Auckland. (The lecture theatre is right next to the entrance. L4 is ground floor, Queen St level)
The Auckland Branch Annual General Meeting will be held at the start of the member meeting scheduled for 15th October 2025. The Minutes of the 2024 AGM as confirmed is as below.
Please note that select committee positions will be vacated, and are up for election to sustain Branch activities.
We have a pressing requirement for individuals to put their names forward by notifying the Secretary via the contact details at the bottom of this post.
RSVP: https://forms.gle/ws7WZmGUxa6C4w1v8
Following the AGM will be a presentation by Prof. G. Aglietti FREng PhD CEng FRAeS,Director of the Space Institute, Te Pūnaha Ātea, University of Auckland, NZ
RemoveDEBRIS: the first successful European demonstration mission of Active Debris Removal
The RemoveDebris mission was the first successful in-orbit demonstration of two technologies for the capture or large space debris, namely a net and a harpoon. The net was used to capture a CubeSat that was previously released from the mothercraft to be the test target for this method of capture. The harpoon was tested against a target made of material representative of old satellite structures, and fixed at the end of a deployable boom. Both technologies were successfully demonstrated, and extended videos that captured the in-orbit experiments were recorded and downloaded. In addition, the mothercraft also released a second cubesat that enabled verification of the functionality of a lidar camera on board the mothercraft, and related software. The last step to complete the mission was to deorbit the mothercraft by deploying a dragsail.
The talk will describe the development and execution of the mission, including some lesson learned.
Professor G Aglietti is an internationally leading expert in space engineering. His career started in Industry working at the Columbus module of the international space station. He then worked at the European Space Agency and subsequently moved to the UK where his work spanned from academic research & teaching to consultancy for industry, covering both theoretical work and experimental activities.
Awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair in Space Engineering, became Director of the Surrey Space Centre. Principal investigator of pioneering missions for technology demonstrations like active removal of space debris, his work has been presented at leading international conferences, giving keynote lectures and featured on various media outlets and is described in over 300 publications. Currently he is the Director of the Space Institute, Te Pūnaha Ātea, University of Auckland.
Auckland Branch Secretary Bryan Stade [email protected]