British engineers are planning to put a mobile phone in space.

The team at Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) in Guildford want to see if the sophisticated capabilities in today's phones will function in the most challenging environment known.

The phone will run on Google's Android operating system but the exact model has not yet been disclosed.

It will be used to control a 30cm-long satellite and take pictures of the Earth in the mission later this year.

"The open source nature of the software is very exciting because you can see how further down the line, once we've got the phone working in orbit, we could get people to develop apps for it," Mr Liddle added.