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UKSpace Conference 2025 Manchester

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A few notes from the two-day UKspace conference that started today and ends tomorrow. Located in the heart of Manchester – Manchester Central.

Space in UK

UK has around 1900 space-related companies
Accounts for 16% of UK GDP
60 UK universities are involved in space
Space is critical infrastructure. For example, the loss of GPS would result in a daily loss of £1 billion to the UK economy.

International students leave the UK after completing their course. A plea for industry to reach out, do the visa application paperwork and keep those people with critical skills in the UK.

The UK should encourage space professionals disenchanted with the policies in the USA to come and work here in the UK

Anu Ojh acknowledged the origins of what is now the UKSPaceConference in the British Rocketry Oral History Program and the Charterhouse meetups prior to 2010. I remember the hectic and industrious Dave and Leslie Wright, who made that happen.

Professor Anu Ojha, acknowledged the origins of the current UKSpace conference to the Space Conference that came out of the British Rocketry Oral History Programme that ran during the first decade of the 2000.

European Space Agency

The UK is one of the 23 member states.
ESA is a separate organisation from the EU, and the UK’s membership of ESA was not directly impacted by Brexit.
ESA has 600 Workers across 23 member states

The UK’s three recently selected astronauts took questions from the media

Rosemary Coogan, astrophysicist
John McFall, Paralympic sprinter and surgeon
Meganne Christian, a materials scientist and atmospheric physicist

Tim Peake has now retired and is unlikely to return to space. The three new astronauts have yet to be allocated a spaceflight.

During the press conference, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher was asked about the cost of flying a UK astronaut to space. He did not offer a specific answer. This is consistent with my experience. Costs, budgets, and prices are usually shrouded in uncertainty. This is true for many/most countries, companies and organisations.

ESA is still hoping to launch the UK ExoMars Rover Rosalind Franklin. Airbus is developing the lander, with a planned launch date of 2028. A very ambitious launch date, I think.

A very well-organised event with attendees from across the UK, Europe, and beyond. Attendees included

Josef Achbacher ESA Director General
Paul Bate UK Space Agency CEO

Tomorrow, Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham will attend

https://www.spaceconference.co.uk/

Episode 124: Exploring the Stellar Neighbourhood. The Toliman Space Telescope

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Toliman Space Telescope. Credit Toliman.Space

Just as the Moon was the first stepping stone for our interplanetary exploration, our nearest star, the Alpha Centauri System, will inevitably become our stepping stone for our Interstellar Journey. That is in the distance. A new mission, The Toliman Space Telescope, is launching soon will target the Alpha-Centauri System from Earth orbit.

In summary

The Toliman mission is a fairly innovative space mission primarily designed to survey our stellar neighbourhood for Earth-equivalent planets. Its main research target is to point its telescope towards the Alpha Centauri system to search for planets, specifically hoping to find Earth-sized equivalents in the habitable zone around the two main stars, Alpha Centauri A and B.

Toliman is unique for several reasons. The 12 cm diameter telescope is the only scientific instrument built on a low-budget 16U CubeSat, using off-the-shelf components as much as possible and employing commercial ground stations.

It will use three unique innovations to attain high-precision measurements 1. a Diffractive Pupil Optical Mask 2. High-Precision Tip-Tilt System with fine-steering or fine-pointing the telescope to achieve the required 1-2 arcsecond pointing accuracy and reduce jitter. A novel AI-powered software, called dLux, running on a custom computer onboard the satellite, will preprocess data before it is downlinked.

It has multiple countries involved in development and partnership including the University of Sydney (Australia), Breakthrough Initiatives, University of Leiden (Netherlands), Carling Japan (Japan), SETI Institute (California, USA), Spar Blue (Australia), Leaf Space (Italy – ground stations), Durosad (Bulgaria and France – space bus), AOS (Connecticut, USA – telescope), Lights Optical (UK – secondary mirror), and a team member in New Zealand. Cooperation is also starting with JPL (USA).

During the Breakthrough Discuss conference in April in Oxford, I learnt a little about the Toliman Space Telescope.

Episode 123: Soaring over the surface of Titan: NASA’s Dragonfly Mission

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Dr Elizabeth Turtle and a scale model of Dragonfly. Credit: NASA

It is December 2034. A spacecraft launched from Earth in July 2028, enters Titan’s atmosphere at 5km/s. Around 2 hours later, it softly lands on the surface at less than 1m /s. Over the next three years, NASA’s Dragonfly mission, a rotorcraft the size of a small car, will chemically analyse the Titan’s atmosphere, ground and a little of its subsurface.

In this interview recorded on 24th April 2025 in Oxford during Breakthrough Discuss, Dr Elizabeth Turtle, Principal Investigator, on the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s largest mission – Titan.

Some of the topics Dr Turtle covers include

  • Dragonfly’s scientific objectives to explore complex organic chemistry and understand the steps that occurred before biology took hold on Earth, helping us learn about our own chemical origins.
  • Dragonfly isn’t just landing; it’s designed to fly from place to place. Over its nominal mission lifetime of a little over three years, it expects to visit 30-40 different landing sites.
  • Flying on Titan is actually easier than flying on Earth because its atmosphere is four times denser and its gravity is only one-seventh of Earth’s.
  • An overview of the Dragonfly – large rotorcraft, technically an X8 octacopter, roughly the size of a small car or the large Mars rovers like Curiosity and Perseverance.
  • Dragonfly is powered by an MMRTG, a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, which provides both the electricity and the crucial heat needed to keep the lander’s interior warm in Titan’s frigid environment.

With a launch set for July 2028 and arrival at Titan in December 2034, Dragonfly promises to reveal the detailed chemistry of this unique world. Launch dates are always susceptible to change. The Cassini-Huygens mission that arrived at Saturn/Titan in 2004 was launched in 1997. Saturn orbits the sun every 30 years. If Dragonfly misses the July 2028 launch window, there may be another thirty-year wait!

Episode 122. Are we alone and the Breakthrough Initiatives

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Dr Pete Worden

For almost 70 years, astronomers have been listening to radio signals from beyond the Solar System, searching for “techno-signatures.” Data collected has increased many folds. Innovative technologies of digital signal processing and artificial intelligence analyse the data in ways never done before. Still, no clear, unambiguous techno or biosignatures have been detected.

You may have heard the announcement about an exoplanet (K2-18b) capable of supporting life, 124 light-years away. The data appears promising, but it is far from definitive.

A two-day Breakthrough Discuss conference held on 23rd and 24th April 2025 in Oxford England, took stock of the latest developments through three main sessions: “Forms of Non-Terrestrial Life”, “The Nature of Consciousness and Intelligence”, and “Detecting Life As We Do Not Know It”.

Breakthough Discuss was overseen by the Chairman of the Breakthrough Foundation, in this interview Dr Pete Worden. A former Brigadier. General, astrophysicist, professor and director of NASA Ames Research Centre talks about

– How and when he became involved with the Breakthrough Initiatives and current status of each
– His reflections on this year’s Breakthrough Discuss
– His interest in astronomy as a child
– What happened to his astronaut application to NASA
– His distant familial connection with his namesake – Al Worden Apollo 15 Command Module Pilot
– His assessment on where we are with the the search for extraterrestrial life and intelligence

Recordings of Breakthrough Discuss presentations are available on the YouTube channel