From Sputnik to space debris: Jodrell Bank’s (sometimes secret) role in Space

Professor Simon Garrington is Associate Director for Jodrell Bank Observatory, and Director of the e-MERLIN & VLBI National Facility based at Jodrell Bank. His research has included many areas of astrophysics, including radio galaxies and quasars, radio stars, and high precision astrometry to define fundamental celestial reference frames.

He led the e-MERLIN project from its inception: this connects 6 large radio telescopes spread across the UK via a dedicated optical fibre network to a central correlator at Jodrell Bank, and is used by hundreds of scientists in the UK and internationally for high resolution radio astronomy, including the formation of planets and stars, the evolution of galaxies and their central black holes, and the distribution of dark matter and dark energy.