UK Space Community benefits from £4.75m in Infrastructure Investment

The UK Space Agency will be channeling the new investment into three cutting-edge projects, including £3 million for a computing infrastructure at the International Space Innovation Centre for processing Earth observation data and making it more accessible for the UK space sector.

The three projects will rely on advances in computing, timing and data-handling to provide added benefits for industry and academia.

Centre for Climate Monitoring and Evaluation from Space (CEMS)
The CEMS at the International Space Innovation Centre will provide multi-sensor processing and a whole range of other tools and facilities for access, manipulation, visualisation and exploitation of data at realistic costs for companies (including SMEs).

UK Gaia Mission Data Processing and Analysis Centre (DPAC)
The University of Cambridge is receiving £0.75 million for a high performance computing system for the UK facility that will process the data from Gaia – Europe’s mission to examine the Milky Way in unprecedented 3-D detail.

The new computing system for the DPAC will support the effective use of mission data across the UK and beyond, including high bandwidth links to the data visualisation facilities at ISIC, Harwell.

Acquire and Exploit the Highest Quality Timing Data from Space (ACES)
Subject to approval by ESA and its Member States, £1M will be used to install a space-to-ground link from the planned ACES atomic clock system aboard the International Space Station to the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, thus allowing an ultra-precision space-based timing signal to be made available to the UK's leading centre of metrology.

The funding will also allow specialised hardware to be provided to distribute the signal to key research and application development users in the UK.

The new funding for these projects is part of the Government’s multi-million pound e-infrastructure investment to provide UK scientists and businesses with access to the most sophisticated technology, keeping them at the cutting-edge of research and development. Minister for Universities and Science David Willetts said:

“We should not think of infrastructure as just roads and railways – it’s also the networks and systems that underpin our world-leading science and research base.

This ambitious and forward-looking programme of investment will be vital for businesses and universities alike. It will improve research and manufacturing processes and reduce the time and money it takes to bring a product to market.

“This will drive growth and innovation across a whole range of sectors and ensure our leading institutions and companies are able to exploit the very latest technology.”