Competing in the new ‘Space Race’ – Royal Aeronautical Society

As the UK gets set to return to launching its own satellites after half a century, where might Britain's space sector be in 2035 and beyond? RICHARD GARDNER reports from Space-Comm Expo22.

Space Comm Expo22 which took place at Farnborough, Hants on 6-7 September presented a timely window on just how much progress is being undertaken to raise the bar on UK involvement in space, generating new policies, innovations, and capabilities needed to deliver on the vast potential that awaits those prepared to invest appropriately.

Once again a new global space-race is underway, with the global space economy expected to grow from 270bn in 2019 to 490bn by 2030, according to the governments National Space Strategy. Furthermore, the UK space sector is determined to grab a much larger proportion of it.

This is as exciting as ever, despite a grim current economic backdrop, as new breakthroughs emerge that are showing how advances in human and robotic space exploration will lead to new sources of raw materials and manufacturing in space. Alongside developments ranging from large, automated orbital platforms to micro-satellites capable of operating individually or within a global mesh, the UK is also well on its way to establishing multiple launch facilities within its own national boundaries for the first time. This opens up capability for speeding the pace of satellite launches and lowering launch costs as well as offering new sector competition.

Any future Moon Base will need more than just solar power to maintain the output needed to provide continuous power generation. Rolls-Royce is designing Micro Reactors for this very purpose. (Rolls-Royce)

The potential for new, lower cost UK military satellite projects is likely to become even more important as it confers greater operational flexibility in national defence planning. Providing UK vertical launch bases, space-ports for air-launches, with infrastructure and control elements, and a new generation of launch vehicles, complete the missing links in the total UK space offering. Alongside sits global leadership in small and micro satellites for LEO use, complex commercial, and military GEO satellites and exploratory space vehicles, including participation in deep space probes and expeditionary planetary programmes.

In a session dedicated to discussing UK National Space Growth, David Morris MP, Deputy Government Whip, told the audience that he was very proud to have been given the portfolio as Space Champion and had previously been Chairman of the Space Group of MPs. He had recently visited Machrihanish in Western Scotland where he saw progress on Skyrora engine testing in preparation for a UK launch, with five sites now agreed for development. He said, The UK is now playing catch-up, 50 years on, to re-enter a global market for orbital delivery where we aim to capture a 10% share, starting later this year. This will bring new high skill employment opportunities across the sector and we look forward to numbers rising from 47K to 100K as new jobs emerge and innovative applications, such as manufacturing in space, receive incentivised commercial as well as official support.

Morris added that via the Return to the Moon programme the UK had an important communications role in tracking space vehicle movements and also expertise in producing service and habitation modules that would be needed for a Moon station. He said that the wider public still take for granted the benefits brought about in everyday life by space access, and they dont realise that there is a return of 12 for every 1 invested. He said, The UKs space effort is a lot more than simply the sum of its parts, and we should speak out to be heard in Government.

Space Comm Expo22 took place at Farnborough on 6-7 September. (Richard Gardner/RAeS)

Space Comm Expo is now the UKs biggest space-focussed event, and provided a very encouraging glimpse of progress through top-level conference sessions featuring 80 keynote speakers and supported by over 150 exhibitors, representing a 65% increase over the previous event. The speaker programmes extended over the shows two days, and the subjects included: Duel-use satellites- civil and military; Nano-micro-satellites, Integrating and sharing the digital fabric of space; Prospects for the colonisation of Mars; Connectivity with the Moon; Sustainability for Small Satellites; Space and weather prediction; Future space travel; Space security; Space partnerships; Space cyber security; Space domain protection; Space and Net Zero and the Economic development of space. The sessions were introduced by familiar television space and science presenters Dallas Campbell and Dr Maggie Aderin Pocock. Amongst the guest speakers were: Dr Paul Bate, CEO, UK Space; John Hanley, Chair, UK Space; Ian Annett, Deputy CEO Project Delivery, UK Space; Kevin Craven, CEO ADS; Andrew Staniland, CEO, Thales Alenia; Rebecca Evernden, Director for Space, BEISD; Elizabeth Seward, Head of Space Strategy, BAE Systems; Pam Underwood, Director, Spaceports, FAA; and Malissa Thorpe, CEO Spaceport Cornwall.

The strong international representation at the show was reflected in the numbers of overseas businesses exhibiting and participating in conference sessions, some 35%, including 20% from the US. Many now have UK bases as well as partnering agreements, with expanding centres of excellence, working closely with the UK Space Agency, UK regulatory authorities and various UK government-supported specialist advanced technology organisations and academia.

A computer generated image of the Skynet 5D satellite in orbit. The Skynet project sustains approximately 800 British jobs. (MoD)

While other specialised military space-focused conferences have been held recently in the UK, defence was also featured in the sessions. Airbus and Northrop Grumman have combined to bring the best of UK and US space communications capabilities together in the latest progression of the UKs Skynet programme, originally started 50 years ago. It is at the forefront of providing secure global military communications for UK Forces and its allies. Airbus is the prime integrator and the UK MoD has supported an expansion of the Skynet architecture which includes upgraded ground stations as well as the supply of new satellites.

Protecting Global Security was the subject of a session which included Air Commodore Mark Flewen, Head of Operations, Plans and Training in UK Space Command. He underlined the criticality of collaboration to secure data and intelligence that was essential to decision-making in the face of an evolving global threat. Flewen told the audience, Anti-satellite activities, including interference, were increasing with methods including interception, jamming and laser dazzling, and a UK Space Ops Centre was expanding with a commercial integration cell, to enable us to monitor nefarious activity out there. This will also have the capability for the development, procurement and operation of new space assets.

Cardiff-based Space Forge is pioneering returnable satellites that are designed for manufacturing next generation super materials in space. (Space Forge)

Many speakers made reference to the need to encourage young specialists to provide an expanding future workforce of scientists, engineers and innovators. It should be a question of training up the best of the best talented candidates working closely with academia, but recognising that suitable talent from abroad should not be excluded, and also due inclusion of those enterprising innovators in small start-ups who can offer unconventional solutions that might produce genuine breakthroughs.

One such example is Space Forge, which didnt exist before the Covid crisis, but in less than three years the young team has gone from working in a garage to growing a company that created a small payload, offering experiments relating to space manufacturing, that will be carried into orbit aboard the first new UK launch vehicle. The company believes that the development of returnable and repairable satellites and orbital fabrication will help reduce operating and sustainment costs as well as reducing waste and adding to the total of space debris that is an increasing menace.

Astroscales QR-style magnetic docking plate is designed to be compatible with a variety of capture mechanisms, either magnetic or robotic. (Richard Gardner/RAeS)

One barrier to space manufacturing is limited capacity where it can be done, and reusable space platform architecture is needed. The International Space Station (ISS) was intended to run on until 2030 but with the earlier than planned withdrawal of Russian participation, US-European co-operation on a future orbital base will develop in a different direction.

Apart from its limited internal size, the problem with using the ISS for experimental manufacturing, as discussed in one conference session, is that it created a task backlog ensuring a long waiting time to carry out proposed new experiments.

How to use space infrastructure to get the best value from new investments touched on such issues as how to refuel space platforms to extend orbital life of satellites and how to use robotics to maintain or up-grade them in-orbit, or assist in safe removal. Some of these associated innovations are destined to be expensive and demanding to bring to market, while others are delightfully simple. Just such an example was to be found on the Astroscale stand in the form of a QR-style magnetic docking plate. The plate is designed to be flexible and adaptable and is compatible with a variety of capture mechanisms, either magnetic or robotic. Fixing this onto satellites before launch will allow easy follow-up access in space. Its designed for an in-space life of over 15 years and aimed at future-proofing docking systems on small satellites.

Much was discussed about using the micro-gravity of space to create new materials and components that will support platforms and other activities in space, but space manufacturing for use on Earth also opens up new areas of possible future growth. Making next-generation semi-conductors could extend benefits throughout the terrestrial supply chain, but how and where manufacture might be located, and the products transported back to Earth, opens up new transfer issues. The end-to-end solution, including sustainment of orbital space or Moon-based enabling infrastructure assets, will prove to be highly expensive to establish. Trying to find ways of making these future visions come true is no longer a science-fiction fantasy and the Space Comm exhibition and conference highlighted how the UK Space sector community is rising to many of these new challenges.

Activity covers development of advanced in-space robotics and micro-engineering, the creation of a global connectivity and observation mesh, and all aspects of returning to the Moon to establish bases for long-term, sustainable human habitation and exploration, potential mining of rare minerals, and fabrication of space platforms and assembly of deep space vehicles, and then beyond to the next already identified goal a Mars base. At the core of enabling these bold visions to become a reality will be the mix and availability of human ingenuity and what quantum physics will be able to deliver beyond artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Rolls-Royce has designed Micro Reactors for use on the Moon and other demanding operating environments where continuous, consistent, highly-efficient and emission-free power is demanded. (Rolls-Royce)

The Rolls-Royce exhibition stand featured an eye-catching model of a Micro Reactor, set against an impression of a future Moon Base. The company enjoys a 60 year pedigree in nuclear power provision, including building powerplants for the UKs nuclear submarine fleet. It has now designed Micro Reactors for use where continuous, consistent, highly-efficient and emissions-free power is demanded, in a compact package, operating in demanding operating environments. Space is just one example and comes with its own challenges, but Mark Cheesman, Rolls-Royces Head of Business Development and Future Programmes, explained to AEROSPACE that a future Moon Base will need more than just solar power to maintain the output needed to provide continuous power generation through cycles which include 14 days of dark and surface temperatures which vary from +250 to -100C. NASA is committed to a Fission Surface Power programme that would lead to a full development programme in 2030 and this would act as a steppingstone to a very suitable base solution he explained. The Micro Reactor is a very safe design solution with tiny uranium oxide pellets sealed within silicon carbide layers. This is a dry environment and wont release any fission products. The design is scalable and there are no moving parts and operations would be passive and remotely monitored in use.

In a mining situation either in space or on earth its adoption would slash costs and provide continuous power independently of the day/night conditions for comprehensive power services on the Moon Base. It would also provide a well-suited power solution for a follow up base on Mars. There is always a regulatory challenge dealing with radical new technologies but if any company can deliver on the promise it has been shown that Rolls-Royces optimism is to be believed.

This year's Royal Aeronautical Society President's Conference, hosted by2022 President Peter Round FRAeS, will take place at 4 Hamilton Place and online between 18-19 October and is titled New Space. It will bring together experts and practitioners in order to inform potential users of the current and future capabilities of commercial new space and its benefits to society. Recent rapid increase of availability of launch, and reducing costs of launch, now mean that access to space is a commercial reality. Thousands of companies are now looking at how space can be used that wouldnt have in previous years because it was deemed as unaffordable to do so.

The conference will:

- Look at current and evolving trends in the global space sector from the perspective of the primes, the people and the skills required, finance, new business and infrastructure and the importance of launch as a national capability.- Analyse the need for regulation (congestion in space, space control etc.) and the funding of new space (how do financial markets invest and what does the future look like).- Allow you to hear from new space operators, bringing together an impressive panel of speakers from across the world.- Discuss how the UK can become a space power by 2030 and its path to get there.

For more details, visit:https://www.aerosociety.com/events-calendar/raes-presidents-conference-new-space/

Richard Gardner FRAeS 14 October 2022

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Competing in the new 'Space Race' - Royal Aeronautical Society