How the UK is making its way back into the space race

The UK is a world-lead­ing cen­tre for satel­lite man­u­fac­tur­ing and data analy­sis, with one miss­ing ele­ment: its own satel­lite launch capa­bil­i­ty. That is about to change. 

From Space­port Corn­wall to the Sax­a­Vord Space­port on Shet­land, pri­vate com­pa­nies and entre­pre­neurs are lead­ing the way to build the space­ports need­ed to posi­tion the UK as a cen­tre for the satel­lite launch indus­try. The UK government’s goal is to grow the UK’s share of the glob­al mar­ket for space from 5.1% to 10% by 2030, and in so doing, earn the UK’s new space­ports around £4.2 bil­lion in launch rev­enues. 

There are now more than 4,800 satel­lites in Earth’s orbit, 1,800 more than last year. Elon Musk’s SpaceX alone hopes to deploy near­ly 15 times that num­ber just for its satel­lite inter­net ser­vice. 

It is impor­tant for us to be able to dri­ve to the space­port in a cou­ple of hours rather than have a long logis­ti­cal chain

The bur­geon­ing indus­try has led to a rock­et renais­sance. In 2021, a total of 144 orbital launch­es took place, of which a record 133 were suc­cess­ful. Space­ports are now pro­posed in coun­tries from the US to Indone­sia. 

“We are one of the biggest man­u­fac­tur­ers of small satel­lites across the world, but we don’t have the capa­bil­i­ty to launch,” says Matthew Archer, com­mer­cial space­flight direc­tor at the UK Space Agency. With demand grow­ing rapid­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly for the launch of small satel­lites, there’s a real com­mer­cial oppor­tu­ni­ty, he says, with the gov­ern­ment able to help indus­try grab a slice. 

“This will give the UK an end-to-end sup­ply chain, which we know from sur­veys is what cus­tomers want,” he says. “It is also about the UK to a degree devel­op­ing strate­gic inde­pen­dence by hav­ing our own capa­bil­i­ty.”

National importance

The refusal of Russia’s space agency Roscos­mos to launch a Soyuz rock­et car­ry­ing 36 OneWeb satel­lites due to Britain’s “hos­tile stance towards Rus­sia” has high­light­ed the dan­ger of rely­ing on oth­er nations to launch UK satel­lites. OneWeb is a glob­al satel­lite inter­net access com­pa­ny in which the UK gov­ern­ment has a large stake.

Chris Lar­mour is co-founder and CEO of Orbex, a UK-based low-cost launch com­pa­ny with a rock­et fac­to­ry in For­res, near Inver­ness. Orbex plans to launch a rock­et up to 12 times a year from a sin­gle launch­pad at the £17.3m Space Hub Suther­land in the far north of Scot­land, pro­vid­ing the space­port with vital income.

For Lar­mour, it’s vital that the UK has its own space­ports. “It is impor­tant for us to be able to dri­ve to the space­port in a cou­ple of hours rather than have a long logis­ti­cal chain that involves fly­ing or ship­ping,” he says. “If there weren’t space­ports in the UK, we’d have to go over­seas to Nor­way or Swe­den or French Guiana to launch these rock­ets, and that destroys the cost mod­el for a rock­et of this scale.” 

When the pub­lic hear the word “space­port”, they may imag­ine some­thing vast like Cape Canaver­al. The UK’s pro­posed space­ports are much small­er. Sax­a­Vord will have three launch­pads on the Lam­ba Ness penin­su­la on Unst in Shet­land and cost £43m, ris­ing to £100m over five years.

While Suther­land will launch rock­ets only from a sin­gle part­ner, Sax­a­Vord will gen­er­ate rev­enue from sev­er­al, includ­ing UK-based Sky­ro­ra, as well as Lock­heed Mar­tin and its rock­et tech­nol­o­gy part­ner ABL Space Sys­tems, which intend to launch the UK and Europe’s first ver­ti­cal-launched satel­lite in 2022 for the government’s Pathfind­er pro­gramme. 

These sites plan to launch mini or micro rock­ets the old-fash­ioned way: ver­ti­cal­ly, like the rock­ets that blast off from Cape Canaver­al, as opposed to hor­i­zon­tal­ly, when they are launched from an air­craft.

They’re around the same size as an inter­con­ti­nen­tal bal­lis­tic mis­sile (ICBM) rather than one of Elon Musk’s much longer Fal­con 9 work­hors­es, because they are designed to car­ry small satel­lites and nanosatel­lites into the low Earth orbit need­ed for cus­tomers like OneWeb and SpaceX’s Star­link, as well as for Earth obser­va­tion.

The north­ern lat­i­tudes of these space­ports make it eas­i­er to launch such satel­lites, which are intend­ed for polar orbit. They can do so safe­ly, sur­round­ed as they are by the sea and sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed areas.

At the oth­er end of the coun­try, Space­port Corn­wall plans to launch satel­lites hor­i­zon­tal­ly up to 12 times a year by 2030 from rock­et-car­ry­ing planes like Vir­gin Orbit’s Boe­ing 747. The planes will take off and land on the exist­ing run­way at Newquay air­port, along­side bud­get air­lines fer­ry­ing tourists to and from the Cor­nish hol­i­day resort. 

Government support

What is the UK government’s role in estab­lish­ing space­ports? Ini­tial­ly, it seemed set to select nation­al cham­pi­ons from sev­er­al com­pet­ing bids. This com­pe­ti­tion was then can­celled in favour of a licens­ing sys­tem, through which many space­ports will be estab­lished, whether for hor­i­zon­tal or ver­ti­cal launch­es. 

The gov­ern­ment sup­port­ed this by putting up over £40m in grants, includ­ing £2.5m to help devel­op Suther­land, £5.5m to Orbex for a new rock­et, £23.5m to Lock­heed Mar­tin to estab­lish launch oper­a­tions at Sax­a­Vord and build and test a new space vehi­cle, and £7.5m to sup­port a launch by Vir­gin Orbit from Space­port Corn­wall.

“The gov­ern­ment sets a tar­get for build­ing a native launch indus­try and pro­vides some encour­ag­ing fund­ing to get that done,” says Lar­mour. “Not all the fund­ing, but seed grants of a few mil­lion pounds, which is not a lot in space launch, but it’s enough to get com­pa­nies mov­ing and acts as a seal of approval that means investors take them seri­ous­ly.”

This hands-off approach to space­ports led to the 2018 Space Indus­try Act and the launch of the UK’s space­flight pro­gramme. The Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (CAA) approves licences. Instead of a fixed-risk thresh­old for oper­a­tors to meet, com­pa­nies in the UK must demon­strate that they have con­sid­ered the risks and have, as much as rea­son­ably pos­si­ble, tak­en appro­pri­ate pre­cau­tions to min­imise them.

“The UK gov­ern­ment wants a bal­ance between com­pe­ti­tion, access to US [cus­tomers], attract­ing known providers and build­ing a UK launch capa­bil­i­ty,” says Archer. The US and UK gov­ern­ments signed a ground-break­ing tech­nol­o­gy safe­guards agree­ment to pro­tect export-con­trolled tech­nolo­gies on Amer­i­can vehi­cles when flown from British space­ports.

The cen­tral gov­ern­ment “owns” space pol­i­cy. How­ev­er, devolved gov­ern­ments like Scot­land – as well as local coun­cils – see space­ports and their ecosys­tems as oppor­tu­ni­ties for their com­mu­ni­ties and will offer help accord­ing­ly. Even a space­port the size of Suther­land will pro­vide about 40 jobs.

In the UK, the gov­ern­ment views space­ports as a com­mer­cial endeav­our. It believes the government’s job is to de-risk the ini­tial invest­ment and kick­start a mar­ket that might not oth­er­wise exist to the same extent.

“There are oppor­tu­ni­ties for mul­ti­ple space­ports, each with their own niche, but if there isn’t the demand, there will be con­sol­i­da­tion,” Archer notes.

That said, the UK gov­ern­ment isn’t will­ing to see the whole indus­try dis­ap­pear. 

“No,” Archer says. “That is one thing that we will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor and test. It is part of the reg­u­lar con­ver­sa­tion we have with Corn­wall, Shet­land, and Suther­land. We have a good deal of con­fi­dence in those projects. For the oth­ers, it is a devel­op­ing busi­ness case that we are con­tin­u­ing to see.”

Future plans

In the future, the gov­ern­ment hasn’t ruled out the devel­op­ment of more pow­er­ful rock­ets that can lift heav­ier pay­loads into orbit, but a heavy launch capa­bil­i­ty would require a great deal more involve­ment.

“It’s one thing we have looked at and we con­tin­ue to keep under review, but it’s a sig­nif­i­cant under­tak­ing, and it’s not a com­mer­cial mar­ket,” Archer says. “For now, the strate­gic ambi­tion isn’t there.”

In the end, build­ing a space­port is rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple; run­ning one is not.

“I know the civ­il engi­neers won’t thank me for say­ing this, but the actu­al build is rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple,” says Scott Ham­mond, chief oper­at­ing offi­cer of Sax­a­Vord Space­port. It’s about build­ing con­crete launch pads and indus­tri­al sheds. The hard part is the glob­al nature of the busi­ness.

“When we launch, we may have to mon­i­tor the rock­ets and look at all the safe­ty aspects out to 5,000 nau­ti­cal miles from Shet­land. The drop zones for some of our stages are like­ly to be up by Green­land.”

The UK has nev­er launched an orbital rock­et from its home soil. That could change this year, poten­tial­ly turn­ing the coun­try into a lead­ing play­er in satel­lite launch and restor­ing a capa­bil­i­ty it gave up 60 years ago.  

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