Britain readies for lift off in the great satellite space race

The remote Fethaland peninsula on the Shetland Islands may not seem like an obvious spot for rocket launches.

But an ambitious plan to ensure post-Brexit Britain has autonomy in cutting-edge space technologies - and the means to stimulate the economy - is set to take shape here, beside an abandoned fishing settlement in the North Atlantic.

Ministers and space industry executives are scrambling towards a new goal: the creation of a 'sovereign launch capability' that will allow the UK to develop, build and launch rockets entirely on home soil. 

Following the UK's exit from the EU, the proposal represents a major geopolitical shift which could also protect sensitive Government systems from space attacks. 

Ministers have big plans for the domestic sector, which currently rakes in around £15bn-a-year for the UK. It has trebled in size since 2000 and holds just over 5pc of the global space economy with around 42,000 people employed.

Within the next decade, politicians hope to double Britain's global market share of the worldwide space industry to 10pc, which would equate to over $60bn a year, according to figures from Morgan Stanley.

Much of the sector’s revenue comes from developing and producing satellites. These satellites, however, are usually launched elsewhere.

“Launch is the bottleneck,” says Mark Boggett, the head of space technology investor Seraphim Capital. “It's really common for my portfolio companies to have to wait up to a year to be able to get launched into space.”

Britain is believed to be the only country to have successfully developed and then abandoned the ability to launch satellites after it propelled the Black Arrow rocket into orbit in 1971. Reversing course on this will be central to ensure the UK can compete with rivals.

It is estimated that over 13,000 satellites are required to be launched by 2030. However, Rob Spurrett, chief executive of satellite maker Lacuna Space, says he's currently forced to outsource launches to countries like India, New Zealand and Russia.

Given the company’s payloads are small, he says satellites are usually “hitching a ride” with bigger launches. As a result logistics become increasingly complex while time to launch ends up taking longer than it should.

“At the moment we’re just a hitchhiker that’s grateful for anyone who stops and is interested in picking us up,” Spurrett says.

That could be about to change. The government is trying to place the UK to be at the global forefront of small satellite launch and space tourism market by developing a series of spaceports throughout the country that will be operational in the early 2020s. 

One site that has potential is Cornwall. Next year, the airport will be expanded to a new spaceport capable of supporting so-called horizontal launches, in which a plane flies a rocket up to 35,000 feet above the planet. 

From Cornwall, up to 12 rockets will be launched each year from a modified Boeing 747 aircraft, detaching from the wing before firing towards the edge of space. 

“Providing launch capability in the UK will be game-changing,” says Melissa Thorpe, the head of Spaceport Cornwall. The site had been due to open at the end of this year but has delayed its opening until early 2022 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Like any major infrastructure project, Cornwall’s spaceport has faced opposition from local environmentalists. “We've had a lot of challenging conversations with them but we had those conversations. We're not ignoring it,” Thorpe says. 

It can be difficult living side-by-side in a community with neighbours opposed to your project, however. “Cornwall is a small space,” Thorpe says. “We all walk our dogs on the same beach and take our kids to the same schools.”

Elsewhere Edinburgh-based Skyrora is using the Shetlands to build Britain back into a fully-fledged rocket launching country. In June, the company launched its Nano rocket 20,000ft in the air from the Fethaland Peninsula at North Roe. The company is exploring local weather conditions before committing to the area.

It's not just cost that is driving a move towards giving UK launch capabilities. Politics is playing a major role, with the Government wishing to end its reliance on foreign launches - something that has troubled security services who have been launching sensitive classified technology into space.

Owning the entire launch chain will improve the security of the UK’s satellites, helping to mitigate the damage of any potential conflict in space in the future.

“You can have satellites brought down by attacks in space,” Dr Barbara Ghinelli, the head of business development at Oxfordshire’s Harwell Campus which is home to more than 100 space businesses. “It's a reality, it is possible.”

Experts hope that expanding the UK’s launch capability will lead to a golden age of start-ups flocking to the country.

But there are concerns that Britain lacks the ability to retain home-grown talent, leaving promising start-ups to be snapped up by better-capitalised foreign rivals. Many industry figures mourn the loss of DeepMind, the British artificial intelligence business that was bought by Google for $500m (£366m) in 2014.

“It's the biggest risk that we face at the moment,” Boggett says. “In order for them to be successful they're going to have to look internationally to source the money. The story with America is if you want to take our money, make yourself into a US business and then we'll talk about it.”

Others, however, believe the risk isn’t as pronounced. “In many respects people think that space is something special or different but it isn’t, it’s just a different place to do business,” says Lacuna’s Spurrett.

“Those same tensions in other industries are in space in the same measure. The concerns about letting Chinese manufacturers into our telecoms market is no different with space, we’ve got the same risks and the same measures and considerations from a security point of view.”

The Government’s $500m purchase of a stake in satellite operator OneWeb last year was welcomed by many in the sector keen to see more money flowing into British companies, but the decision has been controversial. 

Last week saw the resignation of Graham Turnock, the head of the UK Space Agency, just weeks after the completion of the OneWeb deal. Officials from the agency had opposed the OneWeb investment, questioning whether it was good value for money.

What is clear is that Britain will never be able to meet Nasa’s $22bn budget from the US government. Alan Thompson, Skyrora’s head of government affairs, says the only way to build a domestic end-to-end supply chain is to “work through collaboration by joining the dots”.

“I think the UK has been very good at globalism, precisely by being able to champion the underdog,” he says. Part of that collaboration will require a change to the way the sector is currently regulated. Thompson says the industry should be overseen by environment officials so that it will force companies to prioritise the carbon impact of their launches.

The executive says the industry needs to find a “golden medium” between itself and the regulators. He says the regulator should be effectively “sitting on the shoulder of industry and learning as at the same time as industry”.

But all signs point to regulators clearing the way for a new golden era of space launches in the UK, something that could kickstart the fate of satellite makers who have previously been forced to load their precious cargoes on to planes to launch them overseas after months of waiting.

Cornwall's new space port isn't built yet but space companies are already flocking to the area, Thorpe says. It's the same story in the Shetlands, where giants like Lockheed Martin are already lobbying to book in launch slots and bring Britain back into the space race.