“The small-satellite approach now means we are not going to spend our entire national budget on our space program,” said Martin Sweeting, a founder and executive chairman of a British university spinoff called Surrey Satellite Technology, a pioneer in small satellites. The new space economy is also more affordable for medium-size countries like Britain. Doug Liddle, the chief executive, said the company went all the way to New Zealand to launch a satellite this year, only to lose it when the rocket failed.

Having nearby launch sites will fill a need for companies like In-Space Missions, a space service firm in Hampshire, outside London. Virgin Orbit says it plans to charge $12 million to take a nearly 700-pound payload of satellites into space.

Smaller satellites also have much shorter life spans than the larger ones, implying the need for more of them, and more launches. The launch vehicles that Britain is trying to nurture would be suited for smaller satellites that operate in low-Earth orbit, around 800 miles up, compared with about 22,000 miles for telecommunications giants that sometimes cost hundreds of millions of dollars. “OneWeb, and what we are doing on launch, is all about taking a really big role in that new economy,” Mr. Over all, the government is trying to support activity in what is known as “new space,” a more agile and commercial approach to an industry traditionally dominated by government and military programs. The hope in the British government and space community is that OneWeb will build a future generation of satellites in Britain. OneWeb is building its satellites at a factory co-owned by Airbus in Florida. OneWeb filed for bankruptcy this year, but is involved in the hottest area of the satellite industry: the creation of so-called constellations, blizzards of coordinated satellites in low orbit, designed to provide blanket coverage for purposes like extending the internet to remote regions. The government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson put its own chips on such efforts by agreeing in July to spend £500 million to acquire 45 percent of OneWeb, a satellite operator. “We are right at the beginning of this journey,” said Mark Boggett, chief executive of London-based Seraphim Capital, which is managing a $90 million space fund. Others are planned to provide internet connectivity on earth and a key link in the burgeoning internet of things, essential for self-driving cars and smart kitchens. Some are used for observation, such as measuring how much oil is stored in a tank farm, valuable data for energy investors. Key has been the emergence of much smaller and cheaper satellites, some the size of a shoe box and costing a relatively small $1 million or less. Branson, but also pushed along by a range of less prominent entrepreneurs and businesses. Space Agency, in an interview.īut the decision to look skyward also coincides with the growing commercial use of space around the world, promoted by deep-pocketed investors like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mr. This year the space agency’s budget was bumped up 10 percent to £556 million (still a small fraction of NASA’s $22 billion).īrexit has provided “a real stimulus to get us to think about what we actually need as a country in space,” said Graham Turnock, chief executive of the U.K. The decision to pull away from the European Union has heightened awareness that Britain, which has largely relied on European and American space programs for services like satellite navigation, would be at risk without its own space infrastructure. A big reason for the turnaround is Brexit.

British space pioneer tyucoon