Innovation in space
Summary of an event held on 14 March 2016
at the Royal Academy of Engineering
Innovation in space
Summary of an event held on 14 March 2016
at the Royal Academy of Engineering
Contents
© Royal Academy of Engineering
July 2016
www.raeng.org.uk/space
Royal Academy of Engineering
Prince Philip House
3 Carlton House Terrace
London SW1Y 5DG
Tel: 020 7766 0600
www.raeng.org.uk
Registered Charity Number: 293074
c2 Royal Academy of Engineering
Front cover photo: Galileo spacecraft
formation © OHB System AG
Cutout photo: Clyde Space’s 1U
Outernet Platform will send
emergency weather warnings,
medical advice, as well as news and
entertainment information to users
for free. Each CubeSat will receive
data streams from a network of
ground stations and the data will then
be transmitted to the user’s hand-held
devices on the ground
© Clyde Space
1. Foreword
2
2. Space and space technology
3
3. The UK in space
5
4. Current and future space technologies
8
5. Space-enabled services
13
6. The business of innovation in space 17
7. Further reading and information
21
8.Acknowledgements
22
Innovation in space 1
Space technology is an inherent part of the response
to the key challenges currently facing mankind
1. Foreword
Over the past four years, the Royal Academy of Engineering has held
a series of half-day conferences to showcase UK innovations within
engineering sectors that have potential for growth and for global reach.
This Innovation in… series has covered such sectors as aerospace and
automotive, construction, agritech and cross-sectoral technologies such
as autonomous systems.
The conference at the Academy on 14 March 2016 tackled space and space
technology, an industry in its own right, but also an enabling technology
for many other branches of business and science. It attracted engineers
and business people from industry, academia and beyond to hear a series
of presentations on the opportunities where the UK in particular is making
a significant and increasing contribution to the international exploitation
of space.
This report is not intended to be a verbatim record of the conference,
which was recorded for the Royal Academy of Engineering’s website.
Rather, it seeks to identify the technologies where there is potential
for growth, the applications that are taking advantage of them, and
the business factors that could help or hinder UK involvement. The aim
is to promote further discussion, both within the Royal Academy of
Engineering and beyond.
2. Space and space
technology
In just two generations, space has moved from being the stuff
of dreams through the phase of pioneering excitement to be an
essential and regular part of the infrastructure. Chairing the event,
Professor Sir Martin Sweeting OBE FREng FRS, the founder and
executive chairman of SSTL, Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, said
that the overriding feature of current space technology was the
wide range of applications where the impact of space was felt: from
communications to agriculture and from the observation of climate
change to disaster prediction and relief.
Sir Martin said that space technology
was an inherent part of the response
to the key challenges currently
facing humankind, including the
demographic realities of an ageing
population, food production and
water supply, security and the fight
against terrorism, the monitoring of
environmental change and the use
of natural resources. Technologies
delivered from space have the
potential to be available to all and
thus to kick start wealth generation
and economic growth in parts of
the world that earthbound systems
struggle to reach.
But future space technologies are also
going to rely on the development of
current innovative systems on earth,
Sir Martin said. For example, many
applications were based on advances
in microelectronics coming out of
the consumer electronics industry,
and manufacturing processes to
make large numbers of spacecraft for
Photo: EDRS-C, the second node of the European Data Relay System (EDRS). EDRS is designed to transmit data between low
Earth orbiting satellites and the EDRS payloads in geostationary orbit using innovative laser communication technology © ESA
22 Royal
RoyalAcademy
Academyof
ofEngineering
Engineering
Innovation in space 3
‘constellation’ applications depended
on ideas borrowed from other
industries where series production
had helped to cut costs significantly.
The space community had previously
thought in terms of one-off or
small numbers of satellites: “The
constellation concept means we need
to change how we think in space,” he
said. And in parallel the sheer number
of spacecraft and applications for
them demanded a rethink in terms
of access to space, which has been
highly costly in the past using
conventional techniques. That means
new technologies in terms of new
kinds of launchers and facilities,
but also new and more open ways
of doing space business. Sir Martin
commented that new technologies
such as air-breathing engines may
change the economics of space, but
will require significant investment
and he welcomed the initiative
around the UK Spaceport that is due
for 2018.
SKYLON in flight. SKYLON is a single stage to orbit space plane designed to be powered by Synergistic Air-Breathing Rocket
Engines (SABRE). © Reaction Engines Ltd
There is already a largely hidden but substantial
£11 billion UK space industry that employs around
80,000 people directly and indirectly
3. The UK in space
SSTL, Sir Martin Sweeting’s company which was a spin-out from
the satellite research work at the University of Surrey, is an
acknowledged worldwide leader in the development of small
satellites for scientific missions. The UK has also long been an
important part of the wider European space industry, building
satellites and other components for both military and civilian
missions. In addition, there is a very strong UK involvement in the
scientific instrument business and in satellite communications,
where deployment in space has become regular practice and UK
companies are world leaders.
So, although the UK has had until
now a fairly limited success rate in
the more highly-publicised parts of
what used to be termed the ‘space
race’, the other aspects mean that
there is already a largely hidden
but substantial £11 billion UK space
industry that employs around 80,000
people directly and indirectly.
More than that, however, satellites
and commercial applications of
4 Royal Academy of Engineering
space was identified by the UK
government as one of the ‘Eight
Great Technologies’ for the future,
a driver of innovation, technology,
applications and new businesses.
The current UK government has
continued the work started by
the previous one under the Space
Innovation and Growth Strategy
(IGS), which calls for a programme of
co-ordinated action to establish the
UK firmly as a leading space nation
Innovation in space 5
The UK in space
Sentinel-1B heading for orbit © ESA/ATG medialab
and to grow the UK share of the global
market to a target of 10%.
The potential rewards are significant.
UK space activity measured in
economic terms grew by 9% a
year between 1999 and 2007; the
downturn of recent years has barely
dented the growth, and Sir Martin
Sweeting told the Royal Academy
of Engineering conference that the
sector was still seeing increases of
7% a year, four times the national
average. Within the 20-year plan put
forward under the IGS up to 2030,
there are estimates for a further
100,000 UK jobs to come directly or
indirectly from the business of space.
One of the factors behind optimism
for UK growth in the sector is a
fundamental shift from the early
days of space and the-then space
race dominated by the US and
the former Soviet Union and by
space exploration. While the initial
tentative steps into space were taken
by governments and by government
agencies such as the European Space
Agency, public funding of space
has been declining worldwide and
commercial interests in sectors such
as communications and science are
now dominant and expanding fast.
Allied with technology changes that
increase the viability of smaller-scale
projects, the space industry of the
future is likely to be a much more
broadly-based sector in terms of its
players, and it is also an area where
smaller companies can now make
an impact.
Acquired by NigeriaSat-2 a few days before the Olympics 2012, this image shows the East End of the city of London including
the Olympic Park to the North of the Thames, London City Airport, London’s flood defence – the Thames Barrier, and the
Millenium Dome © NASRDA
6 Royal Academy of Engineering
Innovation in space 7
Current and future space technologies
The question of how to miniaturise avionics to achieve the same level
of reliability and functionality in ever smaller spacecraft is key
4. Current and future
space technologies
STRaND-1 smartphone nanosatellite. Space researchers at the University of Surrey’s Surrey Space Centre and SSTL
developed this 3U CubeSat containing a smartphone payload that used advanced commercial off-the-shelf components
© SSTL/Surrey Space Centre
Three of the key and overlapping applications for space technology
are in the fields of earth observation, communications and
fundamental science. But many of the technology and innovation
challenges that space technology companies face are related to
problems that would also be very familiar to earthbound engineering
businesses. There is constant pressure on costs; there are demands to
shorten the product development cycle and the time to launch; there
are contrasting and at times conflicting requirements both for series
production of satellites and for customisation to meet individual
needs in terms of payloads and platforms; and there are ever more
sophisticated instrumentation systems for detecting and measuring.
Developing satellite capabilities
CEO Patrick Wood outlined SSTL’s
diverse set of satellite payload
capabilities and described the
development of a series of platforms
that can flexibly accommodate
different payloads. SSTL’s missions
range across communications and
optical missions, the latter with
increasingly high resolution, to novel
types of mission such as orbital
maintenance. Its future ambitions
8 Royal Academy of Engineering
centre around missions to the moon,
planets and asteroids and rendezvous
in-orbit.
The cost challenges, said Patrick
Wood, mean that satellite builders
are increasingly looking to use
commercial off-the-shelf (COTS)
equipment for missions, and that
in turn means there is a new and
different kind of proving and testing
to be done to ensure that technology
that uses standard parts will work
under remote control in the tough
physical conditions of space.
The Carbonite-1 earth observation
trial that SSTL launched as a
technology demonstrator is an
example of this. The satellite,
deployed as an 80kg package in
a ‘gap’ among other commercial
payloads in a rocket launch, uses a
COTS high-definition camera and
telescope combination. Because
the satellite was ‘hitching a ride’
alongside other commercial satellite
deployments, the test orbit is not
ideal, but the trial has proved that,
in a more conventional lower earth
orbit, Carbonite-1 would be able to
achieve a 1m resolution on ground
objects. Thus emboldened, SSTL
is now working on a Carbonite-2
version which will weigh just 50kg
and achieve a 50cm resolution.
Cost and convenience are issues in
space technology, but there are other
requirements too. Carbonite-1 has a
terabyte of data storage on-board,
and decisions have to be made early
about data collection, storage and
transmission, Mr Wood said. The
question of how to miniaturise
avionics to achieve the same level
of reliability and functionality in
ever smaller spacecraft is key, and
trends elsewhere to merge cyber
and physical systems and to digitise
previously analogue functions
through application-specific chips
and programmable systems are
also likely to find uses in space
technology.
Many of these issues are also
concerns for Airbus Defence and
Space, which last year became
the world’s largest supplier of the
communications satellites which go
into geostationary orbit. James Hinds,
Director of Strategy Development,
Space Systems, told the Academy
conference that the dominant driver
Innovation in space 9
Current and future space technologies
The use of communications satellites only dates back 50 years or so,
but it has already seen capacity leap from the ability to handle single
telephone calls to today’s multi-stranded telecommunications and
internet traffic
for his business was the need to
increase capacity to handle the ever
greater bandwidth that was required.
The use of communications satellites
only dates back 50 years or so, but
it has already seen capacity leap
from the ability to handle single
telephone calls to today’s multistranded telecommunications and
internet traffic. Now, Mr Hinds said,
future requirements from universal
connectivity, the Internet of Things
and the resultant ‘big data’ point to
accelerating demand, and there are
extra complications with the need
to deliver signals to mobile targets,
such as the developing technology
in connected cars and unmanned
aerial vehicles. There is a need to
revisit core business models so that
new requirements are delivered
at the right cost. At the same time,
the whole market is evolving and
the infrastructure to support its
development is emerging: customers
are expecting the acquisition cost to
be reduced, shorter lifecycles, and
the use of capacity to adapt over
time, he said.
Some of the extra capacity can be
squeezed into satellites through the
improvement of digital processors
and optical links, providing “more
data capacity per slice”. And some
of it will also be delivered through
‘disruptive’ concepts such as the
so-called constellations of satellites,
where large numbers of identical
10 Royal Academy of Engineering
spacecraft are deployed along a
single orbit to provide significantly
augmented capacity, or alternatively
additive manufacturing in space.
Some also is likely to come through
changes in launcher technology,
with electric propulsion, for example,
offering greater flexibility in terms of
payloads.
Research and development
investment at Airbus – with national
government and EU support – has
therefore had to be on a very broad
front, with issues ranging from
digital technologies and SWaP (Size,
Weight and Power) performance
through to the process and logistics
work associated with the different
goals of series production and
customisation. So alongside the
specific technologies associated
with communications infrastructure
and with spacecraft, there is a
need to embrace concepts such as
lean management and product reengineering as well.
Technologies for space science
missions
If there are diverse demands within
the satellite communications
business, then the same is true
also in space science missions, Paul
Eccleston, the Chief Engineer at RAL
Space, said. The technologies that are
relevant to current missions and in
which the UK has strengths include
those associated with detectors and
ExoMars 2018 Rover. The ExoMars Rover provides key mission capabilities including surface mobility, subsurface drilling and
automatic sample collection, processing, and distribution to instruments © ESA
instrumentation, with the hardware
and software of autonomous
devices such as rovers, and with the
technology not just of launching
spacecraft but also of enabling them
to land safely on a planet, a moon
or a comet, and then to adjust and
optimise their positions once landed.
Other technologies include deep
cryogenic space technologies to
deal with extremes of temperature,
deployable structures that allow
systems that cannot be launched to
be built in space and high-stability
structures that remain correctly
aligned.
Innovation in space 11
The European Space Agency has set
out some broad themes for space
science beyond the next 10 years
in its ‘cosmic vision’ – they range
from exploring fundamental laws of
physics and the conditions for the
evolution of the universe and of life
through to observation of how the
solar system actually works.
While established detector
technologies are evolving
incrementally, completely new
detector technologies are also
emerging such as longwave infrared
and Terahertz systems that would
enable new science to be done,
Mr Eccleston said. Concepts such
as formation flying of satellites
or using the solar winds as a
spacecraft propulsion system have
applications only in space, but
other ideas, such as using laser
systems for communications and
aspects of quantum technologies,
have potential applications in
terrestrial science too. For example,
autonomous systems being
developed for rover vehicles on the
Moon or Mars have applications
for earthbound businesses such as
agritech, he said.
Sir Martin concluded the session on
space technologies by outlining his
vision of the future. He anticipated
that there would be increasing
international cooperation as new
nations became active in space, and
more cross-fertilisation of ideas.
There would be increased pressure
on how the human-machine-satellite
interfaces would be managed to
make them as effective as possible.
Finally the competing requirements
of reducing feature size, increasing
speed and reducing power would
catalyse the development of systems
at electron/photon level or even
biologically-based systems.
Universal internet access will also potentially unlock
new markets in the delivery of medical services and
education, in teleconferencing and in the provision of
government services
5. Space-enabled
services
Not all space innovation happens in space. Developments in satellite
and spacecraft technologies are encouraging terrestrial businesses to
think about new services, or about existing services delivered in new
ways. The meeting heard about three examples.
Satellite constellations for global
broadband
OneWeb is a satellite communications
concept that is set to take advantage
of the work done on satellite
miniaturisation, digitisation
of communications and series
production of spacecraft by groups
such as SSTL and Airbus. The aim,
said Vice-President of Regulatory
Affairs Dr Tony Azzarelli, is to build a
network of earth-orbiting satellites
to provide global broadband services.
Proba-3 formation-flying. Proba-3 is the world’s first precision formation-flying mission. A pair of satellites will fly together
maintaining a fixed configuration as a ‘large rigid structure’ in space to prove formation-flying technologies
© ESA - P. Carril, 2013
12 Royal Academy of Engineering
Currently, Dr Azzarelli said, 54% of
the world has inadequate access to
broadband or no access in any form,
and even in countries such as the
UK, where there is a well-developed
terrestrial infrastructure, 50% of
smaller businesses complain that
broadband is inadequate. OneWeb
intends to deploy 648 low-earthorbit satellites on 18 polar circuits
by 2020 to give instant access with
latency of less than 50 microseconds
worldwide. From an initial satellite
capacity of 7.5 Gbps per satellite, the
global constellation can bring to bear
up to 5 Tbps of new capacity, and the
operator has formed a joint venture
with Airbus Defence and Space at a
plant in the US that will produce 900
one-cubic-metre satellites.
OneWeb’s innovation is on several
levels. The delivery of the innovative
Innovation in space 13
Space-enabled services
OneWeb satellite constellation © OneWeb
overall system is reliant on a novel
business plan that has raised $500
million and involves world-leading
businesses, such as Qualcomm,
Airbus, Intelsat and Virgin, as
partners and shareholders. The
group has the required satellite
filings with the International
Telecommunications Union that
gives it access to the necessary
spectrum, and launch deals with
Ariane and Virgin to put its satellites
into orbit. And it is sponsoring
technology developments in
satellite miniaturisation and series
production.
But a lot of the innovation, Dr
Azzarelli said, will come with what
the system will enable when it is
up and running. Universal internet
access will facilitate alreadyidentified markets for mobile
14 Royal Academy of Engineering
ESA’s Sway4edu2 system brings rural schools online via satcoms. The setup provides access to eLearning for teachers and
students, media content and other online monitoring tools and information © ESA
communications – between vehicles,
for example – and disaster relief.
But it will also potentially unlock
new markets in the delivery of
medical services and education, in
teleconferencing and in the provision
of government services.
Opportunities in location services
and earth observation
Dr Chaz Dixon, Technical Director
of Position, Navigation and Timing
at the UK’s Satellite Applications
Catapult, outlined some of the work
that is going on in location services
delivered by space technology. The
first satellite-based positioning
systems were driven by defence
needs – the American GPS system and
the Russian GLONASS have been fully
operational since the mid 1990’s. A
European non-military system called
Galileo is being rolled out and is due to
become operational during 2016.
Defence is still a core application,
but there are now much wider
possibilities for navigation and
location-based services in terms of
intelligent transport systems, the
tracking of devices and people, and
the increasing market for machine
services that is being enhanced
by the universal connectedness
of the Internet of Things. The
current markets are dominated by
smartphone applications, and there
will be extensions of many of these
into areas such as telehealth as
wearable devices develop.
Dr Dixon saw a much broader
opportunity in autonomous
machines, from driverless vehicles
through to robotic weeding in
agriculture, and new ideas are
being developed through the
Catapult. There remains, however,
a big challenge: the difficulty of
delivering services indoors, an
issue that navigation and location
There are now much wider possibilities for navigation and locationbased services in terms of intelligent transport systems, the tracking
of devices and people, and the increasing market for machine services
that is being enhanced by the universal connectedness of the Internet
of Things
Innovation in space 15
technology share with mobile
telecommunications.
There are different challenges for
innovation in other potential spacederived services too. Dr Samantha
Lavender, director of the Pixalytics
space technology consultancy and
chairman of the British Association of
Remote Sensing Companies, said that
she was very enthusiastic about the
expansion of earth observation data
now available and the increasing
ease of both handling the data and
extracting information from it.
But she was concerned that, where
large-scale earth observation
projects had, until now, largely
been government-funded, most
of the users of the data were small
businesses and many of them were
losing money.
There was a business conundrum
in this area, she said, affecting both
the space missions producing earth
exploration data and the companies
hoping to exploit the data. Data
usage from publicly-funded missions
had increased significantly when the
data had been made free of charge,
but the number of governmentsponsored missions was always likely
to be limited, and particularly so
when there was little or no prospect
of a return on the investment. At
the same time, however, innovative
small companies needed a workable
business model to enable them to
develop profitable services that
could encourage future investment.
Innovation in this area was not just
about the technology, but about
the whole business climate in the
exploitation of science.
Satellite image of the United Kingdom. Launched in February 2016, Sentinel-3A’s Ocean and Land Colour Instrument monitors
ocean ecosystems, supports crop management and agriculture, and provides estimates of atmospheric aerosol and clouds
© Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data [2016]/ processed by ESA
16 Royal Academy of Engineering
There is a need to consider the utility of the innovation
and be clear about how technology will be used in a
different way
6. The business of
innovation in space
The conference concluded with a panel discussion that ranged
over innovation, technology and business issues affecting the
development and uptake of ideas derived from space. Panel members
brought a broad range of expertise from different viewpoints to the
discussion.
Some of the contributions addressed
directly Dr Lavender’s concerns
about the business model for
innovative companies in space.
Professor Paul Monks, Professor of
Atmospheric Chemistry and Earth
Observation Science at the University
of Leicester, saw twin challenges
in the development of spaceenabled services – recognising the
opportunities and then constructing
a value chain from them. Craig Clark,
CEO of the successful small satellite
developer Clyde Space, which is
actively targeting customers wanting
data and data products, said that the
key issue was not necessarily about
focusing on innovative technology
as such, but about meeting end-user
needs.
This point about aligning technology
to market needs was followed up
during the discussion. Catherine
Mealing-Jones, Director for Growth at
the UK Space Agency, said that there
was a need to consider the utility of
the innovation and be clear about
how technology will be used in a
different way even before engaging
the end-user: some innovations
needed to be better at saying how
they were actually going to be useful
to customers, she said. This was
true both of applications for wealth
creation and the public good. Mr
Innovation in space 17
The business of innovation in space
Clark added that the sector was now
moving from a position where it had
been largely concerned with making
prototypes for individual spacecraft
to a business in which it was ‘joining
up the dots’ to put together serious
business propositions. The focus was
now on creating products that can be
produced at scale and that connect
the technology and the application.
Professor Monks emphasised the
non-linear nature of the space
innovation ecosystem in which the
technology might follow a ‘spin
along’ pathway, spinning out into
another sector and back into space
at a later stage.
The role of government agencies in
‘NewSpace1’– from the huge clout
of NASA in the US to the European
and UK bodies – was raised in the
discussion. Catherine MealingJones said there was always a
temptation for governments to get
involved in mainly big projects, but
there was recognition now that
space was turning into more of an
entrepreneurial business, fastdeveloping and differently funded,
and the question governments had
to ask was how they might facilitate
this and deal with threats and
opportunities. She saw government’s
key role as regulator and spectrum
allocator rather than funder.
Paul Febvre, Chief Technology
Officer at the Satellite Applications
Catapult, said that the European
Union was always going to be an
important source of collaboration for
academic and industrial research,
but that there was also potentially
a major role for the European Union
in generating opportunities for the
space sector to engage with other
sectors, such as transport and health,
that might make use of innovations
derived from space technologies.
This was particularly important in
opening up new markets to support
the growth of the industry.
Both Professor Monks and Paul
Febvre commented on the challenge
of innovation around ‘big data’ and
of digitally enabling innovation
through data storage services, for
example. Paul Febvre discussed the
potential for generating mass-market
products. He said that for GNSS the
baseline product for the mass market
was strong. For earth observation,
opportunities for high quality, high
value services would need to be
investigated, particularly where
satellite data was being combined
with other sources of data.
Professor Yang Gao, Professor of
Space Autonomous Systems at the
University of Surrey and head of the
robotics laboratory operations at the
Surrey Space Centre, commented on
the long timescale for space missions
from concept to implementation, and
her hope for more rapid realisation
of missions in the future. She
thought that ‘kickstarter’ business
models might have a role to play
in implementing university-based
ideas more rapidly as well as
engaging the public in robotics and
autonomy as well as other areas. Sir
Martin Sweeting commented that
1 The term ‘NewSpace’ refer to the community of relatively new aerospace companies working to develop low-cost access
to space or spaceflight technologies, in contrast to past approaches by government agencies and the mainstream aerospace
industry.
18 Royal Academy of Engineering
For future intelligent transport systems, global navigation satellite systems will enable road pricing and flexible traffic
management and support services provided to connected vehicles such as crash avoidance and route optimisation
robotics would take on a larger role
in the future in on-orbit assembly,
refuelling and debris mitigation as
well as space exploration.
In response to a question about the
relationship between terrestrial
and space telecommunications
companies, Paul Febvre thought
that in future there would be
greater collaboration between
the two industries as a result of a
convergence of costs and capabilities,
and that the satellite industry
would need to engage with the 5G
community.
One of the areas where the panel
agreed that the space community
needed to collaborate came in
response to a question about the need
for security and ‘cyber-resilience’
in space-dependent infrastructure.
Paul Febvre said that, until recently,
the threats to space technology
had largely been electro-magnetic:
an external threat. The sector now
needed to shift up a gear to address
more insidious internal threats that
might compromise the availability of
whole systems or the assurance and
integrity of data. Latent threats may
exist that are ready to activate at any
time. Professor Monks commented
on the role of encryption and that
governments would need to consider
regulation so that it is not a barrier
to market.
Professor Gao said that academic
groups were starting to set up work
on standardisation procedures
and cross-sector issues and that
standards organisations were
interested in this area. Sir Martin
Sweeting added that the liability
Innovation in space 19
regimes would need to be considered.
Catherine Mealing-Jones said that
the national space security policy
showed how government was
addressing this issue, which was
increasingly important as critical
parts of national infrastructure
became more dependent on
space-enabled services. It was for
the industry, the users and the
government to work together on
this, she said.
The final discussion addressed the
issue of skills and training needs.
Professor Monks thought that
re-skilling was vital to produce
the numbers of people needed for
the industry so as not to create
a barrier to growth, and that a
new type of scientist or engineer
would drive forward space-enabled
services. Sir Martin Sweeting said
that fundamental knowledge was
the most important part of any
university course, as specialist
knowledge went in and out of
fashion. Catherine Mealing-Jones
added that government also needed
people who understood space and
what it could offer to drive better
policy and regulation.
A new type of scientist or engineer will be needed to drive forward
space-enabled services
7. For further reading
and information
HM Government, National Space Policy, 13 December 2015
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-space-policy
Space IGS, Space innovation and growth strategy: 2015 update report
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_
data/file/444918/_SPACE-IGS_report-web-JJF-V2.0.pdf
UK Space Agency (2014), The Size and Health of the UK Space Industry 2014
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-space-industry-size-andhealth-report-2014
Royal Academy of Engineering (2013), Extreme space weather: impacts on
engineered systems and infrastructure
http://www.raeng.org.uk/publications/reports/space-weather-full-report
Royal Academy of Engineering (2011), Global Navigation Space Systems:
reliance and vulnerabilities
http://www.raeng.org.uk/publications/reports/global-navigation-spacesystems
Global navigation satellite systems providing accurate, continuous positioning will enable delivery drones to fly the
correct course
20 Royal Academy of Engineering
Innovation in space 21
8. Acknowledgements
Professor Yang Gao
Professor of Space Autonomous Systems, Head of STAR Lab, Surrey
Space Centre
James Hinds
Director of Strategy Development Space Systems, Airbus Defence
and Space Ltd
We would like to thank the following speakers for their contribution
to Innovation in space:
Chair
Professor Sir Martin Sweeting OBE FREng FRS
Executive Chairman, Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd
Speakers
Tony Azzarelli
VP of Regulatory Affairs, Oneweb
Dr Samantha Lavender
Director, Pixalytics and Chairman, British Association of Remote
Sensing Companies
Catherine Mealing-Jones
Director for Growth, UK Space Agency
Professor Paul Monks
Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Earth Observation Science,
University of Leicester
Patrick Wood
CEO, Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd
Craig Clark MBE
CEO, Clyde Space
Dr Chaz Dixon
Deputy CTO, Satellite Applications Catapult
Paul Eccleston
Chief Engineer, RAL Space
Paul Febvre
Chief Technology Officer, Satellite Applications Catapult
22 Royal Academy of Engineering
Innovation in space 23