The UK Space Agency has announced £6.6 million funding for a
range of international science partnerships and STEM education
projects at the opening of this year’s Space Comm-Expo in
Farnborough – one of the UK’s largest space events.
The new Science and Exploration Bilateral Programme is designed
to support science collaborations with international institutions
that will progress space research and problem-solving around the
world.
The new Space to Learn scheme will boost initiatives dedicated to
inspiring young people about space and improve access to STEM
careers and learning opportunities all over the country.
Dr Paul Bate, Chief Executive of the UK Space Agency, said:
Successful international partnerships not only support the
immediate mission or research area; they help us develop
long-term research relationships address the critical challenges
we face on Earth and in space.
This new bilateral funding multiplies up our agency’s impact by
bringing in international investment. This helps to galvanise
global innovation, drive up investment in the UK, deliver new
missions and capabilities, and to champion the power of space to
improve lives and understand the Universe.
As the UK’s space ambitions increase, investing in STEM
programmes is equally critical. We want to make sure that every
young person across all communities can be inspired through
space, imagining new possibilities and innovations to which they
can contribute, drawing on their growing STEM knowledge, and
having fun learning along the way.
The first nine projects selected for funding from the bilateral
programme will link UK organisations with the US, Japan, Canada
and Europe, using £2.3 million UK Space Agency funding to develop
collaborative proposals for new space science and exploration
missions.
One project will see Imperial College London team with the
University of New Hampshire to design magnetometers for NASA’s
HelioSwarm mission, which will improve our understanding of space
weather by using a “swarm” of nine small spacecraft to measure
solar winds.
There is also on work from the University of Cambridge on
CosmoCube, a NASA-led radio-cosmology mission that will explore
the so-called Dark Ages of the Universe, and a collaboration
between Royal Holloway and Indian Space Research to develop
crucial radars for the Shukrayaan mission to Venus, due in 2026.
Meanwhile, the Space to Learn programme will channel £4.3 million
UK Space Agency funding into four major educational projects.
These include the National Space Academy’s series of 1,000
specialised masterclasses, engaging more than 40,000 students
with science career opportunities; the Jon Egging Trust’s Blue
Skies initiative delivering 28,000 hours of space-related
education resources to students, and the Association for Science
and Discovery Centre’s Our World From Space programme, launching
this summer across 22 science centres and museums to help
schoolchildren and families discover the relevance of UK space
science for the future health and sustainability of our home
planet.
The funding will also help the European Space Education and
Resource Office run its Space Inspirations scheme, which sees
regional volunteers from the space sector work with more than one
million children across the UK, creating learning experiences
that help young people to engage with the space sector in a way
that they can really connect with.
