Space Debris

Amanda Solloway Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Amanda Solloway)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) on securing this incredibly important debate and on continuing to champion our space sector throughout his time as a Minister and in this House. I know that he recognises how important to the UK the risk of space debris is, as he noted in his excellent piece in The Times this morning. It is always a great pleasure to hear from the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah). I share her passion for the amazing space sector.

Over the past decade, the space industry has become one of the UK’s fastest growing sectors. It currently employs more than 45,000 people and generates £16 billion annually. The UK has grasped the opportunity by encouraging space sector growth, facilitating the development of space ports to launch satellites from the UK and investing in the OneWeb satellite broadband constellation. But it is important to recognise that space is getting crowded. Although space may seem vast, the orbits around Earth are a limited natural resource, and we must use them responsibly and protect them for future generations, including my granddaughter. It was interesting to hear my right hon. Friend talk about staring at the stars with his daughter.

The growing issue of orbital congestion and space debris could limit the benefits that we get from space and, in the extreme worst case, prevent our use of it altogether, so where does that leave the United Kingdom? Space debris is a global challenge that requires an international effort to remedy, as has been said. Nearly 3,000 working satellites share those orbits, and it is estimated that there are 130 million pieces of debris, about 30,000 of which pose a significant threat.

In the next decade, we expect to see growth to more than 10,000 active satellites in orbit, and we do not want a similar growth rate of debris. The UK has active partnerships in multilateral, intergovernmental forums, including the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and its sub-committees, and the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee. We continue to lead in those forums, working with international partners to agree best practice, develop guidelines and support initiatives that enable and promote sustainability and limit the potential for accidents in space. To ensure that UK space operators meet international guidelines, approaches to space debris mitigation are a key part of UK spaceflight regulation that are considered during the licensing of their actives.

At the G7 in Cornwall last month, the UK facilitated an agreement between nations to strengthen our collective efforts to ensure the sustainability of space for all. That includes how we limit the generation of new orbital debris. We are not only talking; we are investing in technology to address this issue. Currently, our main mitigation against collisions between satellites and debris lies in our ability to detect, identify and track objects in space and take evasive action.

The UK Space Agency is working in partnership with the Ministry of Defence to improve our capability to monitor and warn of hazardous space events. In January, working closely with the UK Space Operations Centre, the UK Space Agency began piloting national collision warning services to enhance our national space surveillance and tracking capabilities. Also, joint civil and military space domain awareness helps to protect UK satellites in orbit and our critical national infrastructure, which is reliant on space services. However, as the amount of debris and the number of active satellites increases, accurately predicting potential collisions becomes harder.

The risk of collision and the number of false alarms can be minimised with better tracking and through the use of emerging and innovative new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, to sort through the mountains of data. However, if the volume of debris and the number of satellites in space continues to increase, as we expect, this action alone cannot fully mitigate the risk. Protecting longer-term UK interests in space will mean reducing the debris population and preventing the creation of new debris. We must look to tackle the cause of the problem, rather than just addressing the symptoms.

Space debris removal is not yet a common capability. However, space agencies, including NASA and the European Space Agency, have launched innovative programmes to combat debris, and the UK has played a real leading role in this activity. In 2019, we invested £80 million, through the European Space Agency, in debris and clean space activities, including research into detecting and tracking debris, lessening the burden of collision avoidance, limiting the production of more debris and cleaning up existing debris.

Working with Switzerland and through the European Space Agency, we are contributing to a satellite mission that will be able to capture and deorbit large pieces of debris. And recently, I had the great pleasure of meeting Astroscale to discuss its privately funded ELSA-d satellite, which right now is demonstrating technology that removes different satellites from orbit. In fact, it was absolutely fantastic to see. Both these missions are looking to utilise the operation centre that we built in Harlow precisely to manage and operate such innovative missions.

There is a commercial opportunity emerging in orbit servicing and in managing the safe disposal of satellites once they are no longer useful. Just last week, Edinburgh-based Skyrora announced a challenge to find and remove Prospero, the first British satellite to have been launched successfully by a British rocket.

Businesses across the world, but particularly in the UK, are developing the innovative technology to address this market, which is estimated to be worth over £2 billion over the next 15 years. We want UK industry to lead when it comes to the sustainable use of space. Last year, we awarded £1 million in grant funding to support projects led by United Kingdom companies, focused on mitigating the effects of harmful debris. This year, we will award a further £1.2 million to continue to develop the enabling technology and £800,000 to study the feasibility of a national mission to remove debris from orbit.

However, we recognise that UK leadership in this area can only trigger change if it is supported by international regulatory standards that require companies or nations to remove debris, in order to create a commercial market. Therefore, we should lead global discussions on the right safety and security norms, and ensure compliance with international obligations in space debris mitigation, while we invest in the research and development to best capture that commercial market of the future.

With significant strategic opportunities ahead, the UK needs to be the shaper of this evolving landscape. By taking leadership in space sustainability, the United Kingdom can drive national and international capability development, and regulatory advances. We can lead international action to establish rules governing the sustainable use of space through close working with allies and multilateral engagement. We must also continue to protect our industry and critical national infrastructure, and better understand the orbital environment through joint civil and military space domain awareness.

I can assure the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central about our imminent space strategy, which we will launch in due course. Timely and sensible Government support will allow us to grow our industrial and academic capability, in order to support UK industry in taking opportunities in the emerging orbital market. This activity could quite literally provide a rocket boost to the economy.

We have an excellent opportunity to secure a leadership role in space sustainability, and with it a bright, sustainable future for the space and satellite application industry, which will deliver benefits for generations to come.