The UK should focus on being a “responsible, intelligent and independent leader” in space sustainability and can make a “major contribution” to the area. That’s the verdict of a new report from the Institute of Physics (IOP), which warns, however, that such a move is possible only with significant investment and government backing.

The report, published together with the Frazer-Nash Consultancy, examines the physics that underpins the space science and technology sector. It also looks at several companies that work on services such as position, navigation and timing (PNT), Earth observation as well as satellite communications.

In 2021/22 PNT services contributed over 12%, or about £280bn, to the UK’s gross domestic product – and without them many critical national infrastructures such as the financial and emergency systems would collapse. The report says, however, that while the UK depends more than ever on global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) that reliance also exposes the country to its weaknesses.

“The scale and sophistication of current and potential PNT attacks has grown (such as increased GPS signal jamming on aeroplanes) and GNSS outages could become commonplace,” the report notes. “Countries and industries that address the issue of resilience in PNT will win the time advantage.”

Telecommunication satellite services contributed £116bn to the UK in 2021/22, while Earth observation and meteorological satellite services supported industries contributing an estimated £304bn. The report calls the future of Earth observation “bold and ambitious”, with satellite data resolving “the disparities with the quality and availability of on-the-ground data, exacerbated by irregular dataset updates by governments or international agencies”.

Future growth

As for future opportunities, the report highlights “in-space manufacturing”, with companies seeing “huge advantages” in making drugs, harvesting stem cells and growing crystals through in-orbit production lines. The report says that In-Orbit Servicing and Manufacturing could be worth £2.7bn per year to the UK economy but central to that vision is the need for “space sustainability”.

The report adds that the UK is “well positioned” to lead in sustainable space practices due to its strengths in science, safety and sustainability, which could lead to the creation of many “high-value” jobs. Yet this move, the report warns, demands an investment of time, money and expertise.

“This report captures the quiet impact of the space sector, underscoring the importance of the physics and the physicists whose endeavours underpin it, and recognising the work of IOP’s growing network of members who are both directly and indirectly involved in space tech and its applications,” says Alex Davies from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, who founded the IOP Space Group and is currently its co-chair.

Particle physicist Tara Shears from the University of Liverpool, who is IOP vice-president for science and innovation, told Physics World that future space tech applications are “exciting and important”. “With the right investment, and continued collaboration between scientists, engineers, industry and government, the potential of space can be unlocked for everyone’s benefit,” she says. “The report shows how physics hides in plain sight; driving advances in space science and technology and shaping our lives in ways we’re often unaware of but completely rely on.”

The post UK ‘well positioned’ to exploit space manufacturing opportunities, says report appeared first on Physics World.

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Cherenkov dosimetry is an emerging technique used to verify the dose delivered during radiotherapy, by capturing Cherenkov light generated when X-ray photons in the treatment beam interact with tissue in the patient. The initial intensity of this light is proportional to the deposited radiation dose – providing a means of non-contact in vivo dosimetry. The intensity emitted at the skin surface, however, is highly dependent on the patient’s skin colour, with increasing melanin absorbing more Cherenkov photons.

To increase the accuracy of dose measurements, researchers are investigating ways to calibrate the Cherenkov emission according to skin pigmentation. A collaboration headed up at Dartmouth College and Moffitt Cancer Center has now studied Cherenkov dosimetry in patients with a wide spectrum of skin tones. Reporting their findings in Physics in Medicine & Biology, they show how such a calibration can mitigate the effect of skin pigmentation.

“Cherenkov dosimetry is an interesting prospect because it gives us a completely passive, fly-on-the-wall approach to radiation dose verification. It does not require taping of detectors or wires to the patient, and allows for a broader sampling of the treatment area,” explains corresponding author Jacqueline Andreozzi. “The hope is that this would allow for safer, verifiable radiation dose delivery consistent with the treatment plan generated for each patient, and provide a means of assessing the clinical impact when treatment does not go as planned.”

A diverse patient population

Andreozzi, first author Savannah Decker and their colleagues examined 24 patients undergoing breast radiotherapy using 6 or 15 MV photon beams, or a combination of both energies.

During routine radiotherapy at Moffitt Cancer Center the researchers measured the Cherenkov emission from the tissue surface (roughly 5 mm deep) using a time-gated, intensified CMOS camera installed in the bunker ceiling. To minimize effects from skin reactions, they analysed the earliest fraction of each patient’s treatment.

Patients with darker skin exhibited up to five times lower Cherenkov emission than those with lighter skin for the same delivered dose – highlighting the significant impact of skin pigmentation on Cherenkov-based dose estimates.

To assess each patient’s skin tone, the team used standard colour photography to calculate the relative skin luminance as a metric for pigmentation. A colour camera module co-mounted with the Cherenkov imaging system simultaneously recorded an image of each patient during their radiation treatments. The room lighting was standardized across all patient sessions and the researchers only imaged skin regions directly facing the camera.

In addition to skin pigmentation, subsurface tissue properties can also affect the transmission of Cherenkov light. Different tissue types – such as dense fibroglandular or less dense adipose tissue – have differing optical densities. To compensate for this, the team used routine CT scans to establish an institution-specific CT calibration factor (independent of skin pigmentation) for the diverse patient dataset, using a process based on previous research by co-author Rachael Hachadorian.

Following CT calibration, the Cherenkov intensity per unit dose showed a linear relationship with relative skin luminance, for both 6 and 15 MV beams. Encouraged by this observed linearity, the researchers generated linear calibration factors based on each patient’s skin pigmentation, for application to the Cherenkov image data. They note that the calibration can be incorporated into existing clinical workflows without impacting patient care.

Improving the accuracy

To test the impact of their calibration factors, the researchers first plotted the mean uncalibrated Cherenkov intensity as a function of mean surface dose (based on the projected dose from the treatment planning software for the first 5 mm of tissue) for all patients. For 6 MV beams, this gave an R² value (a measure of data variance from the linear fit) of 0.81. For 15 MV treatments, R² was 0.17, indicating lower Cherenkov-to-dose linearity.

Applying the CT calibration to the diverse patient data did not improve the linearity. However, applying the pigmentation-based calibration had a significant impact, improving the R² values to 0.91 and 0.64, for 6 and 15 MV beams, respectively. The highest Cherenkov-to-dose linearity was achieved after applying both calibration factors, which resulted in R² values of 0.96 and 0.91 for 6 and 15 MV beams, respectively.

Using only the CT calibration, the average dose errors (the mean difference between the estimated and reference dose) were 38% and 62% for 6 and15 MV treatments, respectively. The pigmentation-based calibration reduced these errors to 21% and 6.6%.

“Integrating colour imaging to assess patients’ skin luminance can provide individualized calibration factors that significantly improve Cherenkov-to-dose estimations,” the researchers conclude. They emphasize that this calibration is institution-specific – different sites will need to derive a calibration algorithm corresponding to their specific cameras, room lighting and beam energies.

Bringing quantitative in vivo Cherenkov dosimetry into routine clinical use will require further research effort, says Andreozzi. “In Cherenkov dosimetry, the patient becomes their own dosimeter, read out by a specialized camera. In that respect, it comes with many challenges – we usually have standardized, calibrated detectors, and patients are in no way standardized or calibrated,” Andreozzi tells Physics World. “We have to characterize the superficial optical properties of each individual patient in order to translate what the cameras see into something close to radiation dose.”

The post Accounting for skin colour increases the accuracy of Cherenkov dosimetry appeared first on Physics World.

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WARSAW, Poland — Polish space infrastructure company SatRev has handed over a new ground station to its client, Oman. The station’s launch is part of the Polish company’s expansion into the Middle East’s space sector, and marks the culmination of its ongoing cooperation with ETCO Space, an Omani state-run company. As part of the project […]

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