Advancing, together: Reflections on Space Symposium 2023

The UK Space Agency team have just spent three days at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs – one of the largest gatherings of the global space community.

Across 60+ meetings, and countless chats on the UK stand and around the conference, we championed the UK space sector and our international collaborations. Most importantly, we focused on what a social worker friend of mine would call “advancement conversations”. These are the ones where we are both building the relationships and progressing towards the outcomes that work for all concerned.

Although each meeting had its own agenda, we came back repeatedly to four advancement themes:

• Building commitment and momentum across key missions, particularly the Rosalind Franklin rover’s search for past life on Mars
• Showcasing how we are providing funding to catalyse investment into the UK, underlined by our recent ￡20 million International Bilateral Fund announcement
• Demonstrating our global leadership on sustainability across the UN and beyond, our work on industry standards, and our national active debris removal mission
• Explaining how the sector and government have changed and are working together, and the progress made since the National Space Strategy was published?

None of this happens without the tenacity and teamwork of people across the Agency, wider government and UKspace – both in the US and at home. Space is a team sport?and we have showed?again how well we work together?– just like we did at the ESA Ministerial, and at the Newquay launch. When we plan together and pull together, we achieve and we advance. Space can be multi-decadal, but what matters is the day-to-day focus and willingness to work together.

On a personal note, I was struck by how much more confident I felt about this conference than I did at my first one last year. We had a great story to tell with concrete funding in place to match our ambitions. I felt more at home as I wasn’t meeting so many people for the first time. And all those briefings that teams have put together for me, from the ESA Ministerial to the Space Symposium, have been sinking in.

Most of all, I feel part of a team that cares about each other and is heading in the right direction. We have fantastic people working at the UK Space Agency, and my thanks goes to everyone for all their hard work on the planning, preparation and briefing that happens behind the scenes for events like the Symposium.

We helped to show the world what the UK brings to space, and how we are bringing the benefits of space to everyone’s lives on Earth. Whether that is protecting the planet, our infrastructure and our orbital environment; growing prosperity across the UK; or understanding the Universe and our place within it, we continued to make progress because we believe in each other and in our shared purpose.

On a week where SpaceX ’s Starship launched but did not make it to orbit, we see again how exciting and how hard space is. That’s why commitment and consistency in delivering matters so much.

We are advancing, together.