UK reaching for the Starlink

Can the UK really provide a Starlink rival, or are there better opportunities for our space industry?

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When you think of the UK space industry, you might struggle to think of anything beyond Colin Pillinger's Beagle struggling to beam a signal back from Mars. However, the UK space industry is a significant business, with more than 20,000 British workers engaged in cutting-edge research such as manufacturing semiconductors or pharmaceuticals in microgravity. Some think it should be bigger, potentially taking on giants such as SpaceX and Amazon with a UK-based launch programme. Could the UK really make a serious dent in space? This is what politicians have been discussing for the past few months.

The UK space industry

The House of Lords might not seem like the obvious home of cutting-edge tech policy, but the Lords Committee on UK Engagement with Space has been hearing from experts, trying to understand the opportunities and challenges facing the UK space industry.

Calling it an industry, though, is stretching the term. It's currently a diverse mix of businesses, some of which are on the very edge of what you might label “space” firms.

Official figures claim there are about 52,000 people currently working in the UK space industry, but according to Dr Heidi Thiemann, director of the Space Skills Alliance, around 20,000 of those are in TV broadcasting - essentially Sky TV. “People who are working in the Sky offices and Sky call centres are counted because it’s part of the economy, because Sky are using satellites,” she said. “Our view is that’s not really spacey.”

Thiemann prefers to focus on the companies “manufacturing satellites – designing, building, launching and then operating them”. Then there are the businesses working with data beaming down from satellites, including Earth observation, communications and telecoms firms.