This week sees one of the space sector’s premier events take place, with the biennial UK Space Conference at the International Conference Centre in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Space for Our Future
The conference takes place between Tuesday and Thursday, and my itinerary for the event kicked off yesterday with a plenary on ‘Space for Our Future’ – which is also the theme for entire conference. The broad-ranging panel discussion included Josef Aschbacher (Director General, ESA), Dr Paul Bate (CEO of the UK Space Agency), Rebecca Evernden (Director of Space, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, DSIT), and Aartii Holla-Mini (Director, United Nations Office For Outer Space Affairs, UNOSA). The discussions touched on the failure of the Virgin Orbit launch from Newquay and current issues for ESA in launching satellites sufficiently quickly.
Launch facilities are a challenge for ESA, with the new Ariane 6 launcher delayed to next year, the test failure of the Vega C rocket earlier this year, and the loss of the Russian facilities following their invasion of Ukraine – meaning Sentinel-1C is unlikely to launch before September 2024. ESA has turned to America and is using SpaceX to launch payloads. Josef said Europe needed stability, which includes guaranteed access to space, with the future being diverse and dynamic. An example is that following the failure of Copernicus Sentinel-1B, only Sentinel-1A remains active, with the launch of Sentinel-1C expected to occur during 2024, but could involve juggling launch schedules.
There is a lot of interest in following a SpaceX style commercial model, building up competition with ESA and others acting as anchor customers. A second interesting area of discussion in this plenary was on skills, with children needing to be ambitious and take different life chances. The takeaways were that there should be a greater understanding of the difference space makes to life on Earth, knowing what the UK is good at, and then taking that ambition to the next level. It is also something ESA are looking to do, taking space ambition to the next level.
Shaun the Sheep at UK Space Conference 2023
The second plenary session I attended yesterday was focused on GeoReturn. On a day when the UK Treasury will outline its autumn budget, the UK has a €109 million GeoReturn deficit to ESA – meaning the UK has paid more into ESA than has been returned to the UK through funded activities supporting industry and academia. This deficit is reducing, but interestingly, for us, Earth Observation (EO) is not in deficit.
Competitively bidding for ESA contracts can be a complex process as the tender documents are written in a specific way, and there are the finance (PSS) forms to learn. The key takeaway was, like taking an exam, clearly understanding what ESA is asking for before answering. When reviewing proposals, ESA will focus on the technical requirements and wants to believe that the bidding team can complete what is requested. Suggestions included that new start-ups in the UK should focus on the supported programmes such as the General Support Technology Programme (GSTP) and Business Incubation Centres (BICs), and if bidding for larger projects, collaborate with more experienced organisations. Pixalytics has been bidding into ESA for over ten years and usually does so in collaboration – often with larger organisations, who may or may not have experience with ESA.
UK Space Sector
As is usual with a national conference, there was a policy announcement yesterday to co-inside with the opening. In this case, it was that the UK is aiming to join Portugal and Spain as a member of the Atlantic Constellation, a global project for developing a constellation of small satellites for Ocean, Earth and Climate monitoring. The UK Space Agency will also provide £3 million to support building a new pathfinder EO satellite in the UK. It is intended to be of the same design as three others from Portugal, and together, they will constitute the first part of the constellation. The data from these satellites will support the detection, monitoring and mitigation of natural disasters.
The last major in-person UK conference was held in 2019 in Newport in Wales, and so it is great to get back to meeting new people in the industry, and catching up with old friends – both of which I have done on the first day! The conference is happening between Tuesday and Thursday this week, but as this is my first visit to Northern Ireland, I’ve decided to stay the whole week to attend the conference and explore the city.
Looking forward to what the next two days have to offer!
