Tagged / satellite

Space Strategy & Satellite Infrastructure

The Commons Science and Technology Committee has opened a new inquiry into UK space strategy and UK satellite infrastructure and has invited written evidence by 24 June.

Here are the terms of reference:

  1. What are the prospects for the UK’s global position as a space nation, individually and through international partnerships;
  2. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the current UK space sector and research and innovation base;
  3. What lessons can be learned from the successes and failures of previous space strategies for the UK and the space strategies of other countries;
  4. What should be the aims and focus of a new UK Space Strategy, including considerations of:
  • technology;
  • skills and diversity;
  • research funding, investment and economic growth;
  • industry;
  • civil and defence applications;
  • international considerations and partnerships;
  • place;
  • current regulatory and legislative frameworks and impact on UK launch potential; and
  • impacts of low Earth orbit satellites on research activities.

 

What needs to be done to ensure the UK has appropriate, resilient and future-proofed space and satellite infrastructure for applications including:

  • navigation systems;
  • weather forecasting;
  • earth observation including climate change; and
  • communication (including broadband).

Contact the policy team (policy@bournemouth.ac.uk) if you wish to provide written evidence to this inquiry.

Innovate UK – emerging & enabling technologies – funding opportuntites

Funding opportunities, innovation, Knowledge Exchange

space SBRI

The Emerging and Enabling Technologies sector group is the new home for  support for early stage (emerging), cross-cutting (enabling) and broad scope (open) innovation across whole economy. (See the Delivery Plan 2016 to 2017 for more information on all the sector groups .)

Although this sector group contains the word technologies in its title, Innovate UK’s actions are guided by the principle that: “no-one buys technology; they buy what technology does for them.”    

The focus here is very early stage technologies, those still emerging, or only recently emerged, from the research base.

By ‘emerging’,  recognise  those technologies, methods and approaches developed in the UK’s scientific research base – primarily in universities – that allow us  to do things that simply couldn’t be done before (or could only be done in theory).

What these emerging technologies have in common is the potential to create totally new value propositions (and so to disrupt markets). Examples include graphene and quantum technologies.

Whilst sectors like Manufacturing and Materials or Health and Life Sciences turnover several hundreds of billions of pounds globally per year, by contrast, many of these early-stage, emerging technology sectors have very low, or even zero turnovers, typically below £10 million pa when we pick them up.

Examples of other high impact technologies include:

  • space and satellites
  • electronics, photonics and sensors
  • robotics and autonomous systems

It has now been admirably demonstrated that:

  • satellite technologies can be used in the fight against illegal fishing
  • advanced sensors can help in the earlier diagnosis of disease
  • compound semi-conductors can manage electrical power more effectively
  • robots can perform tasks in environments too dangerous for people to work in

You can follow Innovate UK on:

     

FP7 Galileo: Presentation on EGNOS and Galileo

A presentation shown at a recent event by the Global Navigation Satellite Systems Supervisory Authority is now available.  The Executive Director gave an update on the state of play within the Galileo and EGNOS programmes.  Also available is a copy of the GNSS market report which sets out the opportunities for the exploitation of GNSS technologies and applications.

Not yet signed up to UKRO? It takes only a few minutes – read more on our blogpost