Northern Ireland's 'rocketing' space industry receives £700k investment into two projects

The UK Space Agency has given over £700,000 to two projects in Northern Ireland which will help small businesses grow their ideas.

There are over 100 companies here which both develop technology and manufacture parts for the aerospace and space industries.

Around half are now moving their focus to space projects, which not only involves making parts for rockets and satellites, but analysing data from space.

This work generated £46m for the UK economy in the year before the pandemic.

The funding from the UK Space Agency includes £495,000 for ADS Northern Ireland, which will go towards overseeing a pilot programme for small businesses.

Director of ADS, Leslie Orr, said: "It is amazing that it's just not about the hardware going up but also the software that comes down - data. Data is actually the bigger part of the industry and Northern Ireland's strengths are not only in engineering hardware but our strengths in cyber security, our strengths in data, we are well positioned to grow in the space sector."

A further £223,000 will go to Northern Ireland Space Cluster Manager, which aims to work with local government, businesses, and academia to coordinate space activity and encourage collaboration and inward investment.   

The projects are among 19 new schemes across the UK.

"What's actually very special about this money is, it's actually more than money. It means that a small company can make contact with the big aerospace and space primes, and that's really market openings. It's probably more important than the money itself," said Mr Orr.

Belfast is set to host this year's 'UK Space Conference' which will bring local and global space communities together in government, industry and academia.

The event will take place from 21-23 November.

The space sector is predicted to be a $600 billion industry by 2030 and it looks like Northern Ireland will now firmly be a part of that future.  

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