UKSEDS Annual Conference

Since UKSEDS was founded in March 1989, the major event every year has been the conference. The UKSEDS Annual General Meeting is held at the conference, as well as numerous space lectures. Past conferences have included some of the top speakers in the space industry, and often astronauts and cosmonauts are invited to relay their space experiences.

The conference is held on a Saturday and Sunday, and is normally held on the second weekend in November. Registration starts on the Saturday morning at about 9:00 - 9:30 am, with the Chair's opening speech at about 10:00 am. Previous years have seen various social events held on the Saturday evening. The Sunday events usually start at about 10:00 am, and the last lecture on the Sunday usually finishes at about 4:00pm. The UKSEDS Annual General Meeting is usually the last official feature.

In addition to the lectures there are display stands with representatives from Industry, the Universities, as well as independent groups. The conference is thus ideally placed to act like a space careers fair.

A number of conferences have also held rocket launching events, with competitions staged off-site, in parallel to the main conference. The rocket launching normally entails transporting people to a remote site for safety reasons, and thus the logistics need to be considered very carefully. If these rocket launching events are to be staged, then safety must be paramount.

The conference allows members from branches around the country an ideal venue to meet and exchange ideas.

These web pages are intended as an archive of previous conferences, with details of lectures, exhibitors and other attractions at the NSSC over the years, plus a gallery of photos from each event. At present the main gaps are for the Founding Conference and the 1st NSSC, for which we're keen to gather more information. So if you still have a programme brochure (or a very good memory!), please get in touch. We're also keen to obtain more photos from previous conferences (particularly the earlier ones)- if you were there and have some interesting photos, we'd like to hear from you! Suitable ones will be scanned, put on the appropriate web page (with a credit of course) and the originals returned.

Below is a table showing when and where each conference was held, with links to the corresponding pages:

Year Dates Location

2007 17^th - 18^th November Open University

2005 12^th - 13^th November Kingston University

2004 Institute of Physics

2003 Birmingham University

2002 16^th - 17^th November Kingston University

2001 10^th - 11^th November University of Newcastle upon Tyne

2000 11^th - 12^th November University of Manchester

1999 20^th - 21^st November University of Kent at Canterbury

1998 21^st - 22^nd November University of Bristol

1997 22^nd - 23^rd November University of Leicester

1996 16^th - 17^th November University of Kent at Canterbury

1995 11^th - 12^th November University College London

1994 12^th - 13^th November University of Oxford

1993 13^th - 14^th November Brunel University

1992 14^th - 15^th November University of Kent at Canterbury

1991 16^th - 17^th November University of Leicester

1990 24^th - 25^th November University of Bristol

1989 25^th - 26^th November University of Cambridge

1989 1^st March Science Museam, London (Founding Conference)