We congratulate the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) on a thought inspiring Webinar on 23 November, with a fantastic panel of experts spanning government, defence, academia, industry and policy. The full webinar is available on the RAeS YouTube channel.
The Webinar explored what it means to be a Space Power and why a national space programme and strategy is a critical element in attaining this. Moving forward in a new political landscape, the panel emphasised that the UK should clearly identify the key areas where investing in space can bring us the most economic, military and societal benefit. The partnerships we focus on and develop, both bi-laterally (e.g. Five Eyes Partners) and multi-laterally (e.g. ESA, EU), are then built with these strategic goals in mind. It was summarised very well as the need to focus on our national priorities and leveraging partnerships to help achieve this, rather than simply joining in initiatives led by others to reap dividend.
Through a challenging period for the UK and the world, the panel underlined the continued inspiration of space and its ability to be a growth engine independent of the broader economic backdrop. Telespazio UK look forward to being a key contributor to this growth, bringing important capabilities in the following strategic areas highlighted by the panel:
- Climate Change: Supporting ESA’s flagship Digital Twin Earth initiative to visualize, monitor and forecast natural and human activity on the planet;
- UK Launch: Expertise in range control and spaceport operations to help support commercial spaceflight from the UK;
- Positioning, Navigation and Timing: Expertise in resilient augmentation services and accurate and resilient timing to support civil and military requirements;
- Data Platforms: Delivery of an EO Exploitation Platform Common Architecture, which provides a blueprint design and implementation for a platform-based ecosystem that provides infrastructure, data, computing and software as a service;
- Defence: Delivery of military space solutions, including working in partnership with our UK parent company Leonardo, one of the biggest suppliers to the UK MoD and major contributor to the UK economy with revenues of £1.9bn;
- Academic partnerships: Through the IDEAS-QA4EO contract we lead a large team of scientific experts, where innovative new data quality validation techniques are developed and operational delivered, now also including efficient artificial intelligence techniques
We look forward to future RAeS space events and are excited to be a lead sponsor for the conference entitled “UK in the 2020s – An Emerging Space Power”, taking place 19-20 May 2021.