East Anglian Astrophysical Research Organisation

The East Anglian Astrophysical Research Organisation (EAARO) is a scientific and educational charity. Our key objective is to encourage and inspire people to pursue science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects and careers, while undertaking meaningful research projects. Founded by Jason Williams in 2011, we have assembled a team of leading astronomers and space experts. These include Chief Engineer Jeff Lashley, a radio astronomy author and technical officer at the UK’s National Space Centre in Leicester, Dr Megan Argo, Astrophysicist at the University of Manchester, and Dr Mark Galloway from the University of Hertfordshire's Bayfordbury Observatory. EAARO established a fully operational radio observatory and satellite ground station in Hertfordshire, UK and has several exciting projects in the pipeline, including a space operations centre in Stevenage and meteor radar system in the Orkney Islands. Our first major project was to function as the primary UK ground-station for the crowd-funded KickSat satellite mission which launched in April 2014 from Cape Canaveral, where we worked in partnership with NASA, the University of Cornell Spacecraft Design Laboratory, and the British Interplanetary Society. We are currently gearing up for a second phase of this project during 2015. Our current research into the behaviour of meteors as they enter Earth's atmosphere includes forward scatter observations using GRAVES, a French radar-based space surveillance system, and the BRAMS transmitter operated by the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy.