Illustration from The Times – by Julian Osbladstone

By Ben Spencer,
Published by The Times, 5 May 2024

Start-ups from Bromley to Rotherham are joining industry giants and boosting a sector that employs 50,000 people, launching satellites and clearing debris

Visitors getting off the train in Stevenage may be surprised to learn that this Hertfordshire new town has an otherworldly secret. Tucked away on a nearby industrial estate is the “Mars Yard”, a room filled with red sand and rocks to recreate the surface of the red planet.

This is where the French aerospace giant Airbus is testing its ExoMars rover, which will blast off in 2028 on a quest to find signs of water on Mars. The mission has been delayed because Russia was ejected from the programme after the outbreak of the Ukraine war.

That delay has had a silver lining for Airbus, which employs 3,500 in the UK in the space sector alone. It will shortly sign a contract with the European Space Agency (Esa) to build thrusters for the landing module the Russians had been due to supply.

“It’s been a real success story for us in the UK,” said Chris Draper, exploration rovers programme manager for Airbus. “Having built the rover at Stevenage, we’ll now be a big part of designing the lander to make sure she gets down safely.”

The 21st-century space race is approaching warp speed. Nasa is planning to send humans back to the moon in 2026; China, Japan, India and Russia are fighting for a slice of the new lunar economy; and the United Arab Emirates has already sent an unmanned mission to Mars.

Despite having no space programme and, so far, no launch capacity, the UK is now muscling in on the action. Remarkably, since 2015, Britain has received 17 per cent of the world’s private investment in the space sector, second only to the United States, according to a PwC report.

Already, 1,590 UK companies and other organisations contribute to the sector. These are not confined to London, Oxford and Cambridge, but are springing up in unlikely locations from Rotherham and Cardiff to Stevenage and the Shetlands. Together they employ 50,000 people and contribute £17.5 billion a year to the economy.

In part this is born out of the UK’s legacy of scientific research and Cold War rocketry. Since then, the UK “has played a major role in international space missions”, said Mark Boggett, chief executive of Seraphim, a trust that invests in space start-ups. “We have leading universities. And we have Europe’s largest venture capital community, which can support space businesses.”

Andrew Griffith, the space minister, said: “I see no reason why British firms should not be right at the forefront of efforts to build a new space-based economy.”

But when the US is gearing up to send astronauts to the moon and beyond, what role will Britain play?

TAKING OUT THE TRASH

One job the UK is poised to excel at is clearing up after the bigger players. An estimated 130 million pieces of space junk, including bits of rockets and obsolete satellites, are floating around the Earth.

Paul Bate, chief executive of the UK Space Agency, said: “With the ever-growing number of objects in space, it is vital to further develop the operational services used to track and monitor spacecraft and debris.” Astroscale, based in Oxfordshire, and ClearSpace, in London, as well as Airbus are designing spacecraft to remove derelict objects from space.

With 100,000 satellites expected in orbit by 2030, British companies are exploring the idea of servicing them while they zoom around the Earth, a market expected to be worth £11 billion by 2031.

BLAST-OFF

The holy grail for many in the sector is launching satellites from UK soil, a feat never before achieved. A much-heralded effort by Virgin Orbit in Cornwall ended in failure last year.

Virgin focused on a “horizontal” launch on the back of a 747 jet. A number of companies are pursuing more traditional “vertical” launches on rockets. A start-up called Orbex on the Moray coast in Scotland plans to make 20-metre-high rockets and launch them from nearby Sutherland. Phil Chambers, its chief executive, said: “If you want to launch a rocket, you need to look for a place that has as few people as possible around.”

Another contender is Glasgow-based Skyrora, which wants to send up rockets from the SaxaVord spaceport in the Shetland Islands. It is targeting a launch this year or next.

Both firms could be beaten to the punch by Lockheed Martin, the US behemoth that makes the F-35 fighter jet. It too plans to launch from SaxaVord. Nik Smith, the firm’s UK space director, said adding “sovereign access” to space would fill a vital gap in the UK’s capabilities. Lockheed is also in the running to build Skynet 6 military satellites — a reminder that defence remains a big part of space spending.

ENGINEERING FOR THE SPACE AGE

In a factory in Bromley, Kent, engineers are making springs. These are not just any springs; they are space-grade springs, top-quality, precision-built, made from the very finest materials. European Springs and Pressings has been supplying the aerospace, defence and nuclear industries for 70 years — and now they are targeting the space industry. The company is trading on its reputation for quality. If you send a satellite into space, you cannot easily pop up there to fix a broken part.

More than 170 miles north, on an industrial estate outside Rotherham, South Yorkshire, a team is extracting oxygen from lumps of rock. Metalysis was founded by Cambridge academics in the late 1990s after they worked out how to use electrolysis to pull valuable metals from rock. One of the byproducts is oxygen. Esa has contracted the company to adapt its technology to use on moon rock, with the eventual aim of providing breathable air for astronauts.

The company employs a team of 50, many of whom are former steelworkers — once the dominant industry in the area. Ian Mellor, Metalysis’ managing director, said that was a factor in bringing the company to the region: “The real driver for us is the skilled workforce who knows how to run high-temperature furnaces.” The company aims to put a model on the moon within five years.

In Cardiff, meanwhile, Space Forge is planning to put a miniature factory into space in the coming weeks. In zero gravity, the semiconductor-maker aims to produce ultrapure crystals for use in highly efficient computer chips. That will be a test; once the factory has done its work, it will burn up in orbit. But in 2026, Space Forge will bring its next spacecraft back to Earth, where the crystals will be recovered. “It is best described as Mary Poppins from space,” said Joshua Western, a co-founder, of how the company will retrieve its craft. “It is a space-grade umbrella which allows us to float back home.”

POWER GAMES

Perhaps Britain’s most ambitious extraterrestrial project is Space Solar, based in Harwell in Oxfordshire. The two-year-old start-up wants to send into space huge solar panels, 1.7 kilometres wide and 4 kilometres tall, then beam the power back to Earth via microwaves.

The panels would be sent up in small batches and assembled in situ, where their high orbit will give them 24-hour sunlight. The beams could be sent to receiving stations anywhere in the world far more cheaply than current power generation, according to its co-founder Martin Soltau.

While the prospects for UK space are bright, there are risks ahead, noted Smith of Lockheed. “Many other nations have realised there is a huge benefit to having their own space sector. We need to make sure we can compete globally,” he said. But as Bate of the UK Space Agency, put it: “Daily life is now very much dependent on space. Satellites forecast the weather, keep people connected, monitor our environment and protect critical infrastructure.”

It may sound like science fiction but we are already in the space age.

See: Original Article

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