Written evidence submitted by University of Strathclyde – (SSS003)
Submission of written evidence to the inquiry into ‘Scotland's space sector follow-up: launch’ by the House of Commons Scottish Affairs Committee.
Written by Malcolm Macdonald. 28 March 2025
1. About
1.1. Founded as a place of useful learning, the University of Strathclyde is an international technical university. Its mission is to make a positive difference to lives of students, society, and the world. The university is located in the Glasgow City Innovation District, a global hub for entrepreneurship, innovation, and collaboration.
1.2. University of Strathclyde is home to one of the largest space technology clusters in Europe, providing access to a wide range of developments and expertise. Space activity is embedded across all four university faculties: Engineering; Science; Business School; and, Humanities & Social Sciences.
1.3. Professor Malcolm Macdonald is the Director of the Centre for Signal and Image Processing (CeSIP), and of CeSIP’s Applied Space Technology Laboratory within the Faculty of Engineering. He is also a visiting professor at University College Dublin’s Centre for Space Research, and a director at Weather Stream, a US-based weather data analytics company. He is a former non-executive member of the UK Space Agency Steering Board (2017 – 2020), and was Director of the Scottish Centre of Excellence in Satellite Applications from 2014 – 2020. He will become President of the Royal Aeronautical Society in 2026.
2. A Global Perspective
2.1. The Scottish space sector has significant latent potential, already developing more spacecraft than elsewhere in Europe, an established data capability, and an emerging launch sector that will realise Europe’s first cross-sector space cluster. However, having led the global development of CubeSats that advantage has been squandered, with competitor nations and regions investing too catch-up. The launch sector faces significant challenges if it is to realise its potential and avoid a similar loss of first mover advantage.
2.2. Any spaceport, just like any airport, with only a single launch operator must be viewed as at risk. This risk is significantly amplified when the launch operator does not have a flight proven capability. The consolidation of the UK’s orbital space launch activity at SaxaVord as a multi- operator site significantly de-risks the UK sector as a whole in comparison to activities elsewhere in Western Europe.
2.3. The UK, along with much of Europe, has focused on the smaller end (by mass) of the launch market, where, of late, dozens of companies have suffered technical, and consequently financial failures. The launch market, globally, is continuing to rapidly change and evolve. The UK must ensure it does not pursue a speculative and dated business case in a rapidly evolving market.
2.4. The on-going development of launch vehicles, globally but principally in the US, has changed the satellite build market, with many operators now deploying spacecraft larger than the
CubeSat formfactor, which Scotland has a strong track-record in. The development of a UK small satellite launch capability must not act as a mirage, preventing Scottish satellite manufactures from responding to global market trends.
2.5. Globally, the space sector is transitioning away from the concepts of ‘up’ and down’ stream. The sector is becoming more integrated, more ‘cross’ stream. This is evident in Scotland’s manufacturing (upstream) capability, with companies acting as service providers (downstream), who also build spacecraft, rather than as merely manufactures. This shift is not only higher margin, it also enables the rapid deployment of novel capabilities that provide unique commercial advantage, often from within Scotland’s leading academic community which is itself a key attractor to inward investors in the sector. Likewise, global launch operators are seeking to move up the value chain by offering satellite services, risking UK launch operators alongside satellite manufacturers becoming ‘the squeezed middle’.
2.6. The UK is a global leader in modern regulation of space activities with the Space Industry Act 20181 delivering a new global benchmark. However, for the UK to deliver on its ambitious National Space Strategy2 it must strengthen still its legal and regulatory platform to ensure support and growth of a safe and sustainable space sector. Concurrently, the UK must recognise that it operates in a global market-place and ensure its legal and regulatory environment is an attractor to launch operators, that it is more agile, responsive, and prompt than global competitors.
2.7. Globally, space is at an inflection point, transitioning from limited access to mass- participation. In March 2023, a report commissioned for ESA noted that “space is undergoing a revolution comparable to the growth of the Internet 20 years ago”, with the “race for geopolitical influence and future economic gain … further accelerating.” Today, as space becomes increasingly strategic governments openly recognise space as a warfighting domain. Meanwhile, as globalisation and interdependencies grow multinational clubs are transmuting as the international order is continually challenged.
2.8. Space, and access to it, is pivotal to life in the UK: space and satellite services support around 16% (more than £360Bn) of the UK’s GDP3, and are an integral part of our critical national infrastructure. Consequently, in a changing world, the UK must secure assured access to space, spanning launch services as well as on-orbit capabilities. Such assured access to space would differentiate Scotland from peer nations, and allow the UK to provide this as a trusted ally to partner nations.
3. Developing for the Future
3.1. Development of a national, sustained space launch capability without a sustained government customer is, probably, unprecedented.
3.2. EU Exit has removed a possible government customer. The UK should continue to pursue ESA launch from Scotland whilst also seeking to ensure UK government, for example the
1 Space Industry Act 2018, as revised, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2018/5/contents
2 National space strategy, Policy Paper, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-space-strategy
3 The Size and Health of the UK Space Industry 2023, July 2024, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the- size-and-health-of-the-uk-space-industry-2023
Ministry of Defence, UK Research and Innovation, and similar, regularly launch from Scotland.
3.3. Space is, almost by-default, a dual-use environment. The Ministry of Defence has made significant steps towards re-establishing a sovereign defence space capability. Much of this, by necessity as well as logic builds on prior UK civil investment, and, logically, future developments should pre-emptively seek out such civil-defence synergies. However, the Scottish sector is not well positioned to benefit from this investment trend as it is, neither, as intrinsically dual-use, or as engaged with the defence and security industries as the sector elsewhere in the UK despite often having better suited capabilities to customer needs. Academia, in Scotland, should be supported to enable Scottish SME engagement in the space defence and security sector, this should also act as a landing runway for inward investment.
3.4. The UK Government should seek to, as part of the National Space Strategy and the Defence Space Strategy, secure assured access to space: providing an end-to-end capability without dependencies on allies, that allies can rely on.
3.5. Assured access to space requires multiple providers of services and capabilities to ensure tactical responsiveness. As such it should be developed within the context of enhanced defence spending and deeper defence co-operation with European partners. This should cover, but not be limited to, workforce planning, access to space, and tactically responsive capabilities of access, and assets on-orbit, and not be viewed as a launch specific capability.
3.6. It is of note that the Norwegian Space Agency has recently placed a launch contract with Isar Aerospace for two satellites, being built in Norway by Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace, from Andøya Spaceport in northern Norway in 2028. Contracts such as this support the development of commercially viable, scale-able services, and investable companies, as well as demonstrating and securing assured access to space.
3.7. Academia needs to be viewed as a key enabler and core part of the sector that is integral to future growth. Further recognition should be given to the value of basic research as the pipeline of future commercial innovations, that engineering science underpins the technical innovations of the future, and provides the skilled workforce of the future. Moreover, academia should be viewed as a ‘customer friend’ to enable government to extend the concept of sustainable and assured access to space to the delivery of public services, establishing user needs to provide customer pull of space services that will drive both satellite manufacturing and launch customers to help secure a sustained long-term pipeline of launch activity.
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March 2025