£13m of satellite money: 16 projects, awards from £199,000 to £2.1m
The UK Space Agency has split £13 million between 16 satellite communications projects, from broadband on a ScotRail service to crop sensors. The awards run from £199,000 to £2.1 million, and they are handed out through a European programme.
Sixteen satellite communications projects will share £13 million of government money, the UK Space Agency announced on Tuesday.
The money is routed through the European Space Agency's Advanced Research in Telecommunication Systems programme, known as ARTES, and funded by the UK government. The agency now sits inside the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
The largest single award, £2.1 million, goes to Exobotics in London for a project called STARS. The company is working with Archangel Lightworks and the University of Nottingham on optical communications intended to give satellite operators near real-time connectivity, and will build the first satellites in a planned data relay network.
Archangel Lightworks, based in Oxford, has separately been awarded £1,845,000 to build a laser communications system designed to move data between satellites and the ground at more than 100 gigabits per second.
Airbus Defence and Space UK in Portsmouth receives £1.5 million to develop on-board processors that can be reprogrammed once the satellite is already in orbit.
Aalyria Technologies gets £750,000 to work with Goonhilly Earth Station in Cornwall on networking that holds up across deep-space distances. The agency links that work to future lunar missions and to ESA's Moonlight programme.
The two smallest awards described are the ones the announcement led on. CGI IT UK takes £428,000 for SODOR, which will fit a ScotRail train on the West Highland Line with satellite equipment to provide broadband on one of the UK's most remote rail corridors.
The agency said the trial feeds into wider government work to put satellite connectivity on all mainland trains.
Farmer Charlie, also in London, receives £199,000 for GAUFF, a set of low-cost sensors combining satellite and mobile links to give growers real-time data on crops, soil and local conditions. The technology is built for areas with poor or no internet coverage and the agency said it is expected to be available by the end of next summer.
Space Minister Liz Lloyd tied the awards to jobs as well as connectivity. Betty Bonnardel MBE, chief executive of Farmer Charlie, said the funding would help the company bring precision agriculture to farmers across the UK.
The six awards set out above come to £6.82 million, roughly half the £13 million total. The remaining allocations have not been detailed publicly.
For context on the sector taking the money: the government's Size and Health of the UK Space Industry 2024 report puts employment above 55,000 and annual income at £18.6 billion. The £13 million follows a separate £62 million package aimed at cutting UK space firms' reliance on foreign technology.
The practical point for a small company is the route. This is ESA money administered through ARTES with UK government backing, which means the application goes through the ARTES process rather than a domestic grant portal, and the award sizes on show suggest a sub-£500,000 demonstrator with a named end user — a train operator, a group of growers — is a fundable shape. No date has been announced for the next round.