Latest news with #AirbusUK
Leader Live
15 hours ago
- Sport
- Leader Live
Hiking feat for Hope House Tŷ Gobaith children's hospices
The 26-strong team from the manufacturing engineering operations department of Airbus UK in Broughton, are taking on the revered Three Peaks challenge on Friday (June 13) and raising funds for Hope House Tŷ Gobaith children's hospices. Starting at Scotland's Ben Nevis at about 2pm, they will then travel in coaches down to Scafell Pike in the Lake District, which they will traverse overnight, to finish at Wales' highest point, Yr Wyddfa on the Saturday afternoon. Read more: Matt's epic tribute raises £50,000 for children's hospices The team are no strangers to charity treks having completed four other distance challenges that have raised tens of thousands of pounds for the hospices. Claudia McKinlay from the team, said: "We're really excited for it. As well as giving to this amazing charity, it's fantastic team building. "We'll push through somehow and just hope the weather is kind to us." Accompanied by experienced mountain leaders at each site, the team are hoping to complete the challenge in just 24 hours. Read more: Every moment matters - Wrexham hospice launch funding campaign Department head, Guy Jones said: "It's our biggest challenge yet. We'll be travelling on three coaches and have arranged guides to help us through. "There's still some snow on Ben Nevis but we're really looking forward to it as part of our fundraising commitment to Hope House Tŷ Gobaith. "We're even doing a fundraising trip up Mount Kilimanjaro next year." Read more: 'Incredible day' - Charity car show raises over £2,400 for good causes in Deeside Area fundraiser for the hospices, Nicky Eyes is supporting the colleagues and said: "Guy and the Airbus team are just amazing. "Their enthusiasm is infectious - they always push themselves to help us raise the money we need to provide the best possible care to local children and families living with a life-threatening condition. "You can do it and we're rooting for you every step of the way." • You can sponsor the team online via their JustGiving page here:
ITV News
02-06-2025
- Business
- ITV News
Lancaster arrives back at Broughton for the first time since it was built
Over 5,700 Lancasters were built at Broughton during the war. The plant still exists today and is now operated by Airbus UK.
Metro
29-04-2025
- Science
- Metro
Giant ‘space umbrella' will orbit Earth but it won't stop the rain - here's why
The 'space brolly' is nothing to do with geoengineering A satellite that looks like a giant parasol was launched into orbit today, and will open itself up automatically in space. The 'space brolly' was made by the European Space Agency, and blasted off this morning from South America. While geoengineering projects about 'dimming the sun' have been in the news lately, this has nothing to do with them. It's not going to affect the weather, either by providing us with a cool bit of shade or by keeping the rain off (it's much too high up for that). The Biomass satellite is designed to 'weigh' forests using radar, to tell us more about the state of the world's rainforests and jungles. It will give 'unprecedented insights' into their 'crucial role in Earth's carbon cycle', showing us more about how well they are faring. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Up Next Previous Page Next Page Its 12-metre-wide mesh reflector (the umbrella bit) is supported by a 7.5-metre boom, and was developed by over 50 companies led by Airbus UK. We'd better hope that it's better than our own umbrellas when it comes to getting buffetted by space winds. Why is this mission important? Forests absorb and store large amounts of carbon dioxide: around 8 billion tonnes every year. This makes them important in regulating the planet's temperature, and they are often called the world's 'green lungs'. When they are cut down or degraded, this carbon is released back into the atmosphere, contributing to global heating. We know this is a problem, but so far data is scarce on exactly how bad. How will Biomass help? It is the first satellite to be equipped with a P-band synthetic aperture radar. This is a type of radar which is often used to show us more about space, such as the surface of other planets, like Mars. Are we sure they didn't just repurpose the 02 Arena (Picture: ESA) But now it's being used to create detailed 3D maps of forests and essentially 'weigh' them to see how much biomass there is from trees (the total mass of living organisms in an ecosystem at a specific time). The ESA say this is the first satellite which is 'capable of penetrating forest canopies to measure woody biomass – trunks, branches, and stems – where most forest carbon is stored. 'These measurements act as a proxy for carbon storage, the assessment of which is the mission's primary goal. 'Data from Biomass will significantly reduce uncertainties in carbon stock and flux estimates, including those related to land-use change, forest loss, and regrowth.' The agency's Director of Earth Observation Programmes, Simonetta Cheli, said: 'With Biomass, we are poised to gain vital new data on how much carbon is stored in the world's forests, helping to fill key gaps in our knowledge of the carbon cycle and, ultimately, Earth's climate system.' Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. Arrow MORE: Controversial Russian satellite involved in nuclear row is 'spinning out of control' Arrow MORE: Rare 'smiley face' to light up sky when Venus, Saturn and the Moon align Arrow MORE: China plans to build nuclear plant on the moon to power base shared with Russia
The Guardian
05-04-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Space probe to map carbon content of world's remotest tropical forests
Scientists are about to take part in a revolutionary mission aimed at creating detailed 3D maps of the world's remotest, densest and darkest tropical forests – from outer space. The feat will be achieved using a special radar scanner that has been fitted to a probe, named Biomass, that will be fired into the Earth's orbit later this month. For the next five years, the 1.25-tonne spacecraft will sweep over the tropical rainforests of Africa, Asia and South America and peer through their dense 40m-high canopies to study the vegetation that lies beneath. The data collected by Biomass will then be used to create unique 3D maps of forests normally hidden from human sight. Less than 2% of sunlight reaches the forest floor in these regions, yet Biomass will study them in unsurpassed detail from a height of more than 600km. More importantly, the mission will allow scientists to calculate how much carbon is stored in the forests and measure how levels are changing as humans continue to cut down trees in the tropics and increase carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. In addition, Biomass – which has been built by a consortium led by Airbus UK and funded by the European Space Agency (Esa) – will map the sub-surface geology and topography of forest floors while it will also provide data about the rate at which biodiversity is being lost as forests are cleared for mining and agriculture. 'We need to know the health of our tropical forests,' Simonetta Cheli, director of Earth Observation Programmes for Esa, told the Observer last week: 'We need to know the quality and diversity of its vegetation and the amount of carbon stored there. To get that information we are going to create 3D images of them – from the top of the forest canopy to the roots of its trees.' Tropical forests play a crucial role in protecting the planet from some of the worst effects of global warming because they absorb so much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere: estimates suggest they take up about eight billion tonnes and are often described as the Earth's green lungs. But deforestation and environmental degradation are now reversing this effect. Carbon, once stored in vast amounts, is being put back into the atmosphere, adding to growing levels of greenhouse gases. Hotspots include northern regions of South America, sub-Saharan Africa, south-east Asia and the Pacific where increased production of beef, soya, coffee, cacao, palm oil and timber are triggering widespread deforestation. Quantifying the problem is essential for forecasting what is going to happen to Earth's climate in coming years, said Bjorn Rommen, mission scientist for the Biomass project: 'We don't properly understand what changes are now taking place, partly because we do not have accurate estimations of carbon levels in these forests. Biomass is going to help us to get a better grip on those numbers.' Biomass is scheduled to be launched from Esa's spaceport near Kourou in French Guiana on 29 April on a VegaC rocket and will carry a radar known as a P-band synthetic aperture radar. Its use of long wavelength signals will allow it to peer down through canopies in order to assess how much carbon is stored on the floor and branches of the trees in the world's tropical forests and to assess how levels are changing. This type of radar has never been flown in space before and has required Biomass to be fitted with a giant 12m antenna which will be deployed as the spacecraft begins its sweep over the Earth. Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion 'What the mission will do, effectively, is weigh the forests it studies,' said the leader of the Biomass science team, Prof Shaun Quegan, of Sheffield University. 'We know half that weight must be made up of carbon. So we are going to be able to weigh the carbon content of the world's tropical forests from space and, crucially, work out how much these are changing over time. We will then know the balance of carbon that is flowing to and from the atmosphere. That is enormously important.' This point was backed by Cheli. 'We need to be able to predict what the Earth will look like as temperatures rise. So we are going to integrate its data with AI and with other digital elements of machine learning and that will tell us what is likely to happen in future. It will tell us what we are up against.'
BBC News
29-03-2025
- Science
- BBC News
First British-built space rover to land on Mars in 2030
It's been announced that a space rover built in the UK will be the first ever European space rover to land on by Airbus UK, the Rosalind Franklin rover will be sent into space as part of a mission by the European Space Agency (ESA).It will make a two-year journey across space to land on Mars in 2030, where it will hunt for rocks, fossils, and any other evidence to understand more about how the solar system was hope that the findings could tell us more about whether there is life beyond Earth. The space rover was built by Airbus back in 2019, but it's being upgraded in time for its first space is named after the famous scientist Rosalind Franklin, who made big achievements that advanced our understanding around Rosalind Franklin rover has got parts from all over the UK, with a panoramic camera from University College London and an advanced spectrometer from the University of spectrometer - which is a special scientific measuring instrument - will be used to decide which Martian rocks to drill to test for signs of ancient life. Scientist and space expert Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock said: "The British-built Rosalind Franklin rover will give us vital insight into the history of Mars. "This type of information from other planets can give us a better understanding of our own place in space and our planetary evolution."Samples gathered by the Rosalind Franklin rover may help us answer the age old question 'Are we alone in the universe?'"The Rosalind Franklin is expected to launch on a Nasa rocket in 2028.
