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The UK space agency has come under fire from industry over its latest funding awards, which allocated £33mn to more than 20 companies, including £5mn to the UK subsidiary of a Germany launcher start-up.
Phillip Chambers, chief executive of rocket start-up Orbex, questioned the government’s decision to award £5mn to help HyImpulse, a private company based in Germany, launch its suborbital rocket from the SaxaVord spaceport in the Shetland Islands. The award brings the total UK funding for HyImpulse to £8.8mn.
“HyImpulse have had more funding from the UK than they have had from the German government,” Chambers said in an interview on the sidelines of the Farnborough air show last week. “It is an interesting strategy. I don’t think Orbex would get the same treatment from the German government.”
Orbex, founded in 2015, is planning to send satellites into orbit with its Prime microlauncher from its own spaceport in Sutherland, northern Scotland, next year. It has had £23mn in grants from the UK and £3mn from Denmark, where its propulsion systems are manufactured.
Chambers’ criticism of the funding package for almost two dozen “national space projects” covering a variety of initiatives from a demonstration of an unfolding space telescope to micronuclear reactors, was echoed by space industry executives.
The awards were made through the national space innovation fund but “there is nothing in that package that is really new or will move the needle on the sector”, said one leading industry veteran. There was little that was innovative about a suborbital launch, he added.
Another senior space executive said the funding highlighted a lack of focus in the UK’s space strategy, and a bolder move was needed rather than scattering resources across several different segments.
“They should put one big slug into a national project where the UK can take leadership of a part of the market,” he said.
“We have been doing a little of everything,” said Alice Bunn, president of the trade body UKspace and chief executive of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. “But now we need to prioritise what we want for a national capability, so we can secure leadership on the global stage.”
The comments came in the same week that the National Audit Office, the independent spending watchdog, questioned the effectiveness of the “national space strategy”, published by the previous government in 2021.
After three years, the UK Space Agency and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology were still in the early stages of “identifying and developing the plans and capabilities needed to deliver the strategy’s ambitions”, the NAO found.
The UK Space Agency defended the decision to award grants to 23 projects, including to foreign owned start-ups.
“The UK is open for business and our national programmes are focused on catalysing more private investment into the commercial space sector,” the agency said.
The launch programme “has created a homegrown rocket manufacturing industry that employs hundreds of people, and we also want international firms to view the UK as an attractive place to launch from”, it added.
Meanwhile, Orbex is calling on the government to support its bid to build a bigger rocket than the 180kg capacity Prime.
It has launched a new funding round, aiming to raise about £50mn to begin work on a larger rocket as part of the European Space Agency’s launcher challenge, Chambers said.
The contest aims to spur commercial development of mid-sized rockets capable of carrying between five and 10 tonnes to orbit, with the promise of ESA contracts.
The challenge will bring competition into Europe’s rocket market, which is dominated by the French-owned ArianeGroup and Italy’s Avio.
“We think it is incredibly important that the UK government is clear about whether they want to support the launcher challenge,” Chambers said.
“We missed out on Ariane . . . all those jobs went to France and Germany. With the European launcher challenge the opportunity is there to get back into that market.”
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