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Fixing Our Mess in Space!

Talk

Dr Mark Post, School of Physics, Engineering and Technology

This event has now finished.

Event date
Wednesday 26 November 2025, 6.30pm to 7.30pm
Location
Online only
Audience
Open to alumni, staff, students, the public
Admission
Free admission, booking required

Event details

School of Physics, Engineering and Technology Webinar Series

Since the 1960s, we have launched thousands of pieces of hardware into orbit of our Earth, many of which are still up there (or in many cases, pieces of them). This is problematic for our future astronauts, scientific and communications satellites, and indeed any beneficial use of space. To ensure that we have a future above our planet, new robotic technologies for satellites and space missions are now being created. Modular satellites that can be assembled and serviced in orbit will replace single-shot launches of large satellites that are difficult to service and challenging to remove from space when they become obsolete. Autonomous networks of robots will perform manufacturing, warehousing, and maintenance in orbit, without risky human spacewalks.

Join us to explore some of the cutting-edge research and development being done right now on projects such as the robotic space warehouse, STARFAB, that will define new ways of using and working in outer space.

About the speaker

Dr Mark Post received his MSc and PhD in Space Engineering from York University in Canada, and is currently a Senior Lecturer in Intelligent Systems and Robotics at the University of York in the UK. His research focuses on adaptable autonomous robots and cyber-physical systems for space and other challenging and distant environments. He has created autonomous agricultural mapping systems, sensor fusion and control algorithms for orbital and planetary vehicles, tensegrity and bio-inspired land and underwater robots, and communicating modules capable of knowledge-based self-reconfiguration.