Satellites: Adverse Effects on Astronomy
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(1 day, 13 hours ago)
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Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
My Lords, the question about the number of things circulating in space and the implications of that is very important indeed. The number of satellites projected to be launched by 2030 could be as high as 400,000, with estimates ranging from 50,000 to 400,000. This is a very big issue. The amount of space debris is increasing as well, which also contributes to the problem. The UK promotes the sustainable use of space and there is a range of initiatives, from regulation and standards to research, space observation and monitoring capabilities, as well as technologies for active debris removal and in-orbit servicing to try to make things last longer, all of which we will continue, along with the notion of satellite refuelling. This is a growing problem and one that we have raised with the United Nations body and will continue to do so.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I refer to my interests in the register as chair of the National Preparedness Commission. As an economy, we are increasingly reliant on positioning, navigation and timing signals from satellites in space. The Minister participated in the event organised by the Royal Institute of Navigation this morning, which I also spoke at. Could he share with us the Government’s plans around the vulnerability that our national economy and all our businesses will face if there is disruption to PNT signals, either because of space junk or solar activity, or malign activity by another nation? How well prepared are we to deal with those issues?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
This is a critical question. The Royal Institute of Navigation has recently—in fact, today—launched a paper on how to prepare for this. It is something that all critical national infrastructure will be urged to look at, to have a plan for what would happen in the event of GPS failure. There is a longer-term question about the alternatives to space-based navigation and there is active work going on in the UK on terrestrial approaches, including the use of quantum systems to try to get a robust secondary approach to PNT.
Emergency Communications
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(1 year, 4 months ago)
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Viscount Camrose (Con)
Indeed, I recognise the risk that the noble Lord describes. One of the absolute priorities must be to identify whether there is a broader systemic risk of which the unfortunate events yesterday were a symptom or whether this is isolated; the ongoing investigation will absolutely establish that.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I refer to my interests in the register, in particular that I chair the National Preparedness Commission. As we understand it, this was a failure of the 999 system itself. What consideration have the Government given to circumstances in which there is an interruption in electrical power? That could mean, first, that there will need to be reliance on analogue systems—as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones referred to—but also that most domestic landlines will cease to function and, within a couple of hours, so too will most mobile phones, because masts will no longer have power.
Viscount Camrose (Con)
It will be an area covered by the report. I stress that, from the information that I have so far, BT was able to implement its disaster recovery planning and system and return, albeit at a slightly slower pace, to the ability to answer 999 calls. I very much take the point that the wrong combination of catastrophic failures would indeed create a very serious and broad situation.