Military/Aerospace Electronics

A government body which creates secret technologies to support national security – His Majesty’s Government Communications Centre (HMGCC) – has launched an initiative to work more openly with technology firms and academics. HMGCC is based at Hanslope Park near Milton Keynes and is described by the government as a centre of national security engineering excellence. The new commercial initiative is ...

The UK government has announced Enabling Technologies Programme (ETP) funding for a range of projects designed to help boost UK development of new space technologies. Twenty-three projects are involved and, in total, the UK government funding is £4 million. This is made up of £3.2 million from the UK Space Agency (UKSA) with £800,000 contributed by the Science and Technology ...

Aalyria has won a development contract with the European Space Agency (ESA) to deploy Spacetime – its O-RAN compliant “network orchestration” technology – at the agency’s ECSAT 5G/6G Hub in Harwell, Oxfordshire. The goal is to “unlock new 5G/6G Terrestrial (TN) and Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) capabilities,” say the two parties, and Aalyria – a spin out from Google – is ...

Spire Global, the space services specialist, has been awarded a contract by Lacuna Space, a satellite IoT provider, to build and operate six satellites for a dedicated IoT constellation, all of which will be made in Glasgow. Under the agreement, Spire will build and launch the spacecraft, which will be carrying Lacuna Space’s payload and antenna. The companies say there ...

ABB has won a third contract with GHGSat, a specialist in greenhouse gas monitoring from space, to manufacture hyperspectral cameras for four satellites set to launch in 2024. The Swedish-Swiss multinational corporation will be making GHGSat’s C12, C13, C14 and C15 satellites. They will join GHGSat’s constellation that is designed to detect and quantifies industrial gas leaks from space. ABB ...

Teledyne e2v Space Imaging has joined the UK-led climate change TRUTHS mission in a signing ceremony COP 28. Part of The European Space Agency’s Earth Watch programme, The TRUTHS consortium will create a space-based climate and calibration observatory that will improve confidence in climate change forecasts and support net zero mitigation strategies and their impact. The mission will collect measurements ...

With the Mars Rover aiming to launch in 2028, a key instrument for the £10m Rosalind Franklin Mars Rover will now be built in the UK, not Russia. The Space Minister Andrew Griffith has announced that a UK team has been awarded £10m to replace Russian components in the rover, which will be searching for signs of life on the ...

The UK Space Agency (UKSA) and UK Space Command are turning to SpaceFlux to help protect the safety of national space assets, it was announced at the recent UK Space Conference in Belfast. The UK company has been awarded contracts – the commercial terms of which aren’t revealed – to provide tracking data about satellites in geostationary orbit (GEO) and ...

NASA has given contracts to Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket company to put two satellites into orbit round Mars. Launch date is scheduled for August 2024. It will be the first time that Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket has been used but as the contract only worth $79 million, NASA is prepared to take the risk.  The mission is called ...

A programme of orbital rocket launches by HyImpulse Technologies, a launch services provider, is due to be hosted by SaxaVord Spaceport, on the Shetland Islands. These space launches will be due to take place “from late 2025” at the site located on the Lamba Ness peninsula site in Unst. Although HyImpulse will attempt its maiden sub-orbital launch early next year ...