Blue Marble image of the Earth taken by the crew of Apollo 17 on Dec. 7 1972.
Image Credit: NASA
Last week I attended the ‘The UK Space Sector’ conference which took place on Tuesday 3rd June at the Royal Society in London as part of their ‘Transforming our future’ series of events. This series brings together experts from industry, academia and government to explore key scientific and technical challenges of the coming decade and last week it was the turn of the Space sector. It was highlighted how integrated space technology is into everyday life, and there is a potential to achieve more through enhanced collaboration and innovation.
It’s predicted that the global space economy, including the UK space sector, will continue to grow and will be worth US$1.8 trillion by 2035. In a recent blog we highlighted the exponential increase in the number of satellites in space, most of the growth over the next decade is expected in the downstream sector – that is the users of data acquired from space or the use of the space-based assets, rather than the building and launching of satellites – known as the upstream sector. The applications expected to support this sector’s growth include civil security, climate applications, insights for early warning systems and disaster response, together with long-term users such as weather forecasting.
As part of her talk before lunch on ‘Innovation in the space sector’, Professor Joanne Wheeler MBE from Alden Legal discussed that we only have one Space-Earth ecosystem, emphasising sustainability and our obligation not to pollute the space environment and Earth’s environment. The impact from space launches has only started to be recognised and addressed in recent years, as this pollution has developed at a greater pace regarding the number of objects in space – both satellites and space debris – has increased, together with the increased impact on the Earth’s atmosphere from many of these satellites burning up on re-entry.
Space – Preparing for 2075 Report
The afternoon was led off by the keynote from Professor Sir Martin Sweeting OBE FREng FRS from University of Surrey Space Centre & Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, and he introduced The Royal Society’s report ‘Space – Preparing for 2075’ which was released at the event.
Space – Preparing for 2075 aims to get people thinking about how to better prepare for a range of future possible outcomes in relation to space activities that might be taking place in 2075. It gathered a series of experts to think about how space activity might develop, and produced a series of possible outcomes which was stressed weren’t predictions. There was also a focus on ensuring that future activities in space are sustainable and benefits all of humanity.
Professor Sir Martin Sweeting discussed how we are now as dependent on space, as we are on transport. However, as individuals, we don’t realise or think about it, for example, satellite images and positioning tell us where we are and how to get somewhere else navigating using our phone or car, or the fact that timing from clocks in space is necessary for global data synchronisation. As a result a lot of daily life has a contribution from space-based data.
So, what could be the future of space? Two of the potential outcomes that caught my attention were:
- What if we had complete global Earth Observation coverage with artificial intelligence driven data processing, like how we see them in movies? How would this affect privacy?
- Space-based solar power could be used not only to power satellites, but what about using it to move industry into space and not use fossil fuels for energy, which could be achieved through robot-based construction of space assets and data centres.
Over lunch Baroness Catherine Ashton reported on the ongoing House of Lords Enquiry into the UK’s engagement with Space. She said it had revealed a lack of understanding of what was happening, including from those leading the enquiry. Potential areas for improvement included supporting SMEs to grow bigger whilst staying in the UK, strengthening global partnerships, and encouraging private/venture capital involvement alongside dealing with shortages in employees with software/data science skills. This demonstrates why it is vital to bring people together and enhance the understanding of the space sector, both now and for the future.
Conclusion
It was an interesting day and certainly the Space – Preparing for 2075 report is a fascinating read to see where the space sector might be going.
