Credit: The wub / CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons The UK government has published a new space strategy, backed by £7.8bn to 2030. It brings the government’s civil and military space spending under one plan. The government’s announcement on 8 September named national security and defence as its key pillars, alongside growth. The UK Space Strategy formally replaces the National Space Strategy of 2021.
Three bodies published it together. They are the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (BIST), the Ministry of Defence and the UK Space Agency. The government puts the UK space sector at £18.6bn, supporting more than 55,000 skilled jobs. “As space becomes a new frontier of economic and military competition, this plan will help keep Britain secure by strengthening our ability to launch satellites, detect threats and protect the services people rely on every day,” said Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary. Where the money goes The headline number is easier to read in the technical delivery annex.
It lists each programme, its budget and the body that runs it, over the four financial years from 2026/27 to 2029/30. The largest single line is £2.3bn for defence satellite communications, run by the Ministry of Defence. It includes £50m to extend the life of the SKYNET 5 military satellites. Their replacements include SKYNET 6A, which the annex says is due to launch in 2027.
A further £880m goes on space control and on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance from orbit. The government says that money will help track military activity on the ground, spot attacks on satellites and protect British assets in orbit. Together, those two defence lines come to about £3.2bn, or roughly 40% of the total. The civil side is spread thinner.
The strategy sets aside £85m for the National Space Operations Centre, which watches for collisions and hostile activity, and £30m for SaxaVord Spaceport in Shetland. There is £40m for servicing, assembling and manufacturing equipment in orbit, and £57m for better connectivity on trains. The government also lists stronger phone signals among the everyday benefits. Satellite service to phones is a contested market in Europe.
The continent’s largest carriers are in talks to take on Starlink there. A strategy that runs through Europe The annex also shows how much of Britain’s space budget flows through European institutions. The lines for European Space Agency programmes add up to more than £1.6bn. The biggest are £413m for ESA’s mandatory science programme and £269m for human and robotic exploration.
There is also £276m for ESA’s satellite communications work, £205m for its Earth observation programmes and £148m for European launch programmes. On top of that, the UK pays £235m to EUMETSAT, the European weather satellite agency. It also pays from £135m a year to the EU for Copernicus, the bloc’s Earth observation system, until 2027. The strategy itself says the UK believes Europe is stronger in space when it acts together.
The timing fits a busy few weeks for European space. Isar Aerospace reached orbit on 6 September, a first for a European commercial launcher. The EU’s own sovereign satellite network, IRIS², moved into deployment in August. New money, or money already planned The government calls the £7.8bn a record.
Neither document says how much of it is new. The annex describes its figures as the current funding planned for these activities over the Spending Review period. Some defence work runs beyond that. Lindsay Clark of The Register described the package as cross-departmental spending gathered under one plan.
He noted that the government had already announced funding for C-LEO, the UK Space Agency’s low Earth orbit communications programme. The strategy also changes how government buys. It will adopt a single approach to buying and developing space technology, starting with satellite communications. The government says the aim is to steer more work to British suppliers, speed up delivery and get better value.
The record so far The strategy arrives after warnings about delivery. In July, the government’s projects authority rated SKYNET 6, the £8.35bn upgrade of military satellite communications, as red. That rating means successful delivery appears unachievable in the programme’s current form, The Register reported. It cited workforce shortages and slow supplier performance.
The 2021 strategy drew criticism too. Last November, a House of Lords committee found that the UK space sector lacked the strategic direction it needed. The Register reported the findings at the time. Industry groups have welcomed the new plan.
UKspace, the industry trade association, and ADS, which represents aerospace, defence, security and space companies, both backed it, according to TechRadar. The Met Office and the Space Academic Network also gave their support. Defence Secretary Wes Streeting said the strategy recognises that national security depends on freedom of action in space. The annex gives SKYNET 6A a launch date of 2027.
For British space startups, the detail that matters most may be the procurement change. UK companies such as NewOrbit, which raised $18.5m in June, are the domestic suppliers it is meant to favour. Demand elsewhere in Europe is moving fast. Finland’s ICEYE saw its valuation quadruple to €10bn in six months as governments looked for their own spy satellites.
The UK’s single buying approach starts with satellite communications. The strategy does not say when it reaches the rest.
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