In October 1958, the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) proposed to form a committee for space research.
[1] Britain desired a new committee to interface with COSPAR and to organise British spaceflight activities after the International Geophysical Year (IGY).
[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] The BNCSR formed three subcommittees: Tracking Analysis and Data Recovery (TADREC, chaired by J.
[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.