Blue Marble image of the Earth taken by the crew of Apollo 17 on Dec. 7 1972.
Image Credit: NASA

The last week saw two important funding commitments for the UK space sector and Earth Observation industry more specifically. Firstly, the UK Government announced some funding as the country is not currently participating in the ongoing Copernicus programme, and secondly the funding commitments for the European Space Agency (ESA) for the next cycle were announced at the ESA Ministerial. Looking at these in more detail:

UK Funding

Last week the UK Government announced funding of up to £484 million (note the words up to!) to support the research sector following an inability to agree the country’s continued participation in the Copernicus Programme, Horizon Europe, Euratom and Fusion Energy. Participation was agreed in principle, but signing the agreements got caught up in the tensions and issues surrounding UK threatening to unilaterally break the Northern Ireland Protocol following Brexit and remain unsigned.

This funding includes £200 million for UK Research Infrastructure (UKRI) and within this is approximately £38 million for the Earth Observation (EO) field, predominantly in response to the lack of participation in the Copernicus Programme.

The funding will support 17 projects:

• UK EO climate information service to produce new EO climate data.
• EO data hub to develop a next generation data platform for accessing and processing satellite data.
• Satellite Data in Environmental Science (SENSE) Centre for doctoral training (CDT) programme for EO – this will allow a further 20 PhD studentships. This is a programme Pixalytics is involved with, as we are currently support two PhD students as an industry partner.
• UK EO marine and climate mission development programme to help investigate and deliver solutions for the challenge of reaching Net Zero.
• Small satellite calibration facility for calibrating and testing small, cube and nano satellites, which will further support the burgeoning space ports including Spaceport Cornwall.
• UK/Australia EO AgroClimate programme to bring together researchers from the UK and Australia to develop EO solutions optimising and monitoring agriculture productivity and climate change. Pixalytics were part of the pilot activities, looking into Blue Carbon and its potential to support Net Zero activity.
• Surface temperature radiometer network to help validate the data produced by the constellations of infrared remote sensing satellites.
• Innovate in EO programme for developing novel commercial EO applications.
• EO Technology Programme– to develop innovative EO satellite instrumentation.
• UK Met Office, which is based in Exeter, has three projects funded:
  • Transatlantic Data Science Academy– EO Sector training and skills exchange between the UK and the USA.
  • TWInning capability for the Natural Environment – (TWINE)will support using the ESA Digital Twins project, see below, in the natural environment
  • UK Marine and Climate Advisory Service (MCAS)– will develop satellite enabled products to improve the UK’s national weather, air quality and maritime forecasts.
• ESA commitments account for over half the funding, with five projects:
  • FutureEO– ESA’s Earth Observation research and development programme.
  • TRUTHS– This programme is developing a satellite mission to support the generation of climate data through both measuring the raio of engery being received and emitted by the Earth, and acting as an in-space calibration serrive to improve the calibration of other optical missions. Our Managing Director, Dr Samantha Lavender, is part of the TRUTHS Mission Advisory Group.
  • Aeolus-2– The development of the follow on for the Aeolus satellite which measures global wind speeds and hopes to improve weather predictions.
  • InCubed-2– Funding innovative commercial products and services, and has similar ambitions to the Innovate in EO programme above, but this will allow UK academic and commercial organisations to work with partners in other ESA countries.
  • Digital Twins Earth– Creating a digital representation of the whole Earth environment informed by near real time EO data combined with artificial intelligence and modelling techniques to understanding how complex systems interact with each other in different scenarios.

European Space Agency

Last week also saw the ESA Ministerial take place in Paris, and the partners of ESA agreed to a budget of €16.923 billion for the period 2023 – 2027, this is a 16.6% increase compared to the previous budget agreed in 2019. This was below what ESA had originally requested from its partners, although all key priorities went forward as planned, some individual programmes were undersubscribed and this will mean revisiting the plans to determine what is achievable within the budget available. As a reminder, ESA operates on a geo-return basis such that the amount of money a country puts into ESA should be returned to that country through contracts to organisations based there; hence why the values on individual programmes are important.

The budget includes €2.7 billion to ESA’s Earth observation programme, including funding commitments to:

• Two new satellite missions:
  • Harmony – This an identical twin satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) mission flying in convey with Sentinel-1, Harmony will provide data to measure small shifts in the shape of the land surface such as those related to earthquakes and volcanic activity, together with the study of the deformation and flow dynamics of glaciers and ice sheets to better understand sea-level rise.
  • MAGIC (Mass change and Geosciences International Constellation) – will measure the Earth’s gravity to observe the volume of water in oceans, ice sheets and glaciers in order to better understand sea-level change and to improve water management.
• Continuing support planned new missions including:
  • Developing the continuity of the Copernicus programme with newly identified needs.
  • Aeolus-2 follow-on mission.
  • TRUTHS mission.
• Other programmes and activities include:
  • Strengthening the monitoring of new essential climate variables.
  • Expanding the network of third-party EO missions.
  • Preserving essential long-term climate data sets.
• Developing a digital twin Earth model using high-performance and cloud computing or artificial intelligence.
• InCubed-2 and FutureEO

The UK itself has agreed to commit £1.84 billion to the programme for this period, which will make it one of the larger partners, although someway behind the largest contributor, Germany, who are investing €3.5 billion. This investment includes £315 million in EO, although this is likely to include the ESA portion of the Copernicus funding described above.

Summary

These are welcome announcements for the UK space sector generally, which supports almost 50,000 jobs and generates an estimated £16.5 billion for the economy every year, and for the EO sector specifically. Investment into ESA is also considered good value with research showing that over time, every pound invested in ESA generates a return to the UK economy of £10. Hopefully, the industry has plenty to look forward to in the coming years.