This week we’re fully submerged in all things space-related at the industry’s biennial conference in Newport, Wales – in fact, this is the first-ever conference to take place in the International Conference Centre Wales and it’s a great venue with lots of space!
It’s day two today, and yesterday we had a rather long day which began with setting up our stand at 0730 in the morning and finished at the end of the evening Networking Session at 2100. We had intended to put up the stand on Monday evening when we arrived around 1700, but the Small Business Zone where we’re based was still being built! So, it was an early start to set up, although to be fair the stand is small and so set up was relatively quick!
Our first session was the opening morning plenary that began with a welcome from Ken Skates, Minister for Economy and Transport for the Welsh Government. He was followed by Andy Green, UKspace President who reflected on his ten-year tenure in the role which finished at the end of his speech. After the first few minutes, he told us all he’d begun the speech with the same opening sentences as he began his first speech – not many people had noticed – and the words were as applicable today as they were ten years ago. Despite this, Andy reflected on the fact that in his tenure there’d been created a sense of belief in the UK as a place to come and do space business and that that this market was still growing fast.
Andy was followed by a trio of Government Ministers. Chris Skidmore, MP, Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation; Anne-Marie Trevelyan MP, Minister for Defence Procurement; and Graham Stuart MO, Minister for Investment, Department for International Trade who between them made several industry announcements including:
- £1.3 M fund to further the development of satellite launch facilities in the UK including:
- Research & Development hub and satellite launch capabilities in Snowdonia, Wales.
- Establishing a spaceport cluster in Argyle, Scotland.
- Extending a business research centre at Spaceport Cornwall.
- £20 M fund for Space Weather and Forecasting to help predict, and protect, the UK from space weather.
- UK & Australia have today signed a space bridge agreement to establish a new supporting arrangement to help the two countries to better work together on space activities.
- Announcement of £1.5 M to fund 12 Space to Innovate winning bids in a process led by UK Space Agency and Defence Science and Technology Laboratory’s (DSTL).
The UK’s commitment to the European Space Agency (ESA) was, once again, reaffirmed, and they are looking forward to playing a leading role at the ESA Ministerial in Seville in November. Equally reconfirmed was the Government’s desire to increase the UK’s global market share in the space industry to 10% by 2030.
The evening plenary focused on the global future of space. The panel members were from the Australian, Chinese and European Space Agency’s alongside Virgin Orbit with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office chairing. It discussed:
- Areas of excitement and concern, with a need to avoid nationalism and focus on working together beyond boundaries.
- The role of the Insurance industry in space, which we discussed a couple of weeks ago, requiring balancing the needs of entrepreneurship and risk.
- The role of space in protecting the climate including improved manufacture through 3D printing and additive manufacture alongside supporting better decision making, e.g. choosing the greenest route on a sat nav.
It’s been a really busy day for us too! Lots of exciting and interesting conversations on the stand throughout the day and Sarah also did a great job of presenting her poster in the afternoon. Today we unleashed our beta version of the Pixalytics Portal to offer our Earth Observations products in a click and buy environment – we’ll talk more about this next week.
We’re really looking forward to the rest of today and tomorrow. If you’re about, please come up and say hello!
