Particle accelerators, computer centres and satellite testing with RAL Space
- 12th May 2026
- Author: Natalie Tunnicliffe
Our Space Engineering trip to RAL Space began with an early start, meeting at Loughborough College ready to depart at 8:20am. Despite the hour there was a real sense of excitement as we set off for one of the UK’s leading centres for space research and technology. The visit promised a valuable opportunity to see how the concepts we study in the classroom are applied in real-world space engineering.
RAL Space or the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory is the UK’s national space laboratory and part of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). It is the national space engineering hub and provides world-class design, manufacturing, and testing facilities for satellites and space instruments. It has had significant involvement in more than 210 instruments on missions to date and can be found on the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire.
Once we arrived, we headed into the visitors’ centre where we had a brief introduction to the site before being split into groups for the tours. Our students were lucky enough to spend an hour looking round either the national satellite test facility, the ISIS particle accelerator or the scientific computer centre.
I asked the students to tell me what they thought about this inspiring visit...
Tiya, one of our second year students who visited the science computer centre said:
‘The trip to RAL space was really fun! We got to see the system of computers that are used to store data from scientific experiments. The part of it that stood out the most to me were the tapes that were used to store some of the data, and the robot that would move around and access the data from the tapes. Seeing how temperature is monitored and controlled in rooms with many powerful computers was super fascinating and knowing how much data could be stored in each aisle put a lot into perspective. Making the spaghetti and blue tack towers was a great way to spend the afternoon, and I had a brilliant time experimenting with different shapes to see what would be the strongest. Overall the trip was fantastic and gave me a lot of insight into what these types of careers can entail.’
Rudra is one of our first year students who toured the satellite test facility:
‘The trip to RAL in Oxfordshire was a really interesting and inspiring experience for me. I enjoyed being able to visit a place that I genuinely see as a dream environment to work in one day. Seeing the facilities in person made the whole field feel far more real and motivating.
One of the most memorable parts of the visit was seeing the campus and technology used there. I also found it fascinating to see a model of a satellite that is planned to be launched in the next decade. It gave me a better understanding of the level of innovation and research involved in space and scientific development.
Overall, the trip was both enjoyable and motivating, and it strengthened my interest in pursuing a future career in this kind of environment.’
Another of our first-year students, Stan, was part of the tour around the ISIS particle accelerator:
‘First, we entered the ISIS building where we were introduced to the big particle accelerator by going above it. It is able to accelerate up to 84% of the speed of light and fired either muons or neutrons at objects to research their structure. They were doing tungsten at the time, but it wasn’t on while we were there.
Then we walked down next to the particle accelerator where we saw the room where all the super capacitors were stored to give the accelerator big jumps of energy it needs and saw the big concrete blocks protecting us from all the radiation inside. They explained they had to send robots in there to do repairs as it was so radioactive.
Next we went further down the accelerator to find the neutron accelerator that fires neutrons into things to image it and its interior (e.g ancient artifacts that can’t be opened).
After that we found a solar flare detector that’s used to detect when solar flares are coming with high energy particle and how we can counter them to prevent things like data flips. Finally, we were shown some other research machines that worked on things like cancer treatments through drug delivery methods, and also finding what polar bear hair is made out of to imitate the hollow porous core to help creating new thermal insulating materials.’
Once the tours were complete, it was time for a bit of healthy competition. A massive thank you to the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory's public engagement team, who delivered a fantastic engineering session in the afternoon. Students were tasked with designing and building a rocket capable of surviving the vibrations experienced during launch. They had just over an hour to design, build and test their rockets before submitting them for vibration testing. Working within a budget, students had to build the tallest and most stable rocket possible out of blue tack and spaghetti. Congratulations to our winning team, who survived the rigorous vibration testing and built a rocket that was a whopping 67cm tall!
