The British National Committee for Space Research (BNCSR) was a Royal Society committee formed in December 1958. It was formed primarily to be Britain's interface with the newly-formed Committee on Space Research (COSPAR).

History

In October 1958, the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) proposed to form a committee for space research. The Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) was the result of the proposal and first met in November 1958.^[1] Britain desired a new committee to interface with COSPAR and to organise British spaceflight activities after the International Geophysical Year (IGY).^[1][2] The Royal Society consolidated the Gassiot Committee's rocket and the National IGY Committee's artificial satellite subcommittees into the newly formed British National Committee for Space Research (BNCSR).^[3] The BNCSR was officially formed on 18 December 1958 and selected its members 12 February 1959.^[3][4] The 28-person committee was chaired by Harrie Massey and had W. V. D. Hodge as the physical secretary.^[4][5] The subcommittees that were to be incorporated into BNCSR submitted their final reports during the committee's first meeting on 4 March 1959 and were officially dissolved.^[6]

Subcommittees

The BNCSR formed three subcommittees: Tracking Analysis and Data Recovery (TADREC, chaired by J. A. Ratcliffe),^[7] Design for Experiments (DOE, chaired by Massey), and another to coordinate with the World Data Centre at Radio Research Station (RRS) at Slough (chaired by E. Bullard).^[8][6]

TADREC took over the work National IGY Committee's artificial satellite subcommittee.^[9]

DOE continued the work of the National IGY Committee's artificial satellite subcommittee.^[9] The new subcommittee had two initials tasks: to find artificial satellites to launch on and to consider if it was worth providing attitude control to Skylark for better scientific results.^[8]