A new space race? Britain enters the orbital launch business.

​Take a look inside the operations at Spaceport Cornwall, and the focus on precision​ and innovation​ is clear. 

People are dressed in pristine white lab coats, their hair tucked into blue caps, faces obscured by masks and goggles. The space is spotless, devoid of almost any furnishings or clutter. The workers huddle round a table, intent on the task before them, while in the background looms a huge cage, shaped like the nose of a rocket.

Here in southwest England, this clean room is where satellites are integrated into their dispenser – the piece of a launch system that will spit them out into space when they reach the necessary orbit. It’s part of a brand-new facility paving the way for the United Kingdom’s first-ever orbital space launch. 

The launch, expected later this month, will also be the first commercial launch from anywhere in Western Europe. It represents a wider rise of spaceports coming online in Europe, from other parts of the U.K. to Norway and Italy. The moves underscore the growing importance of space globally as a commercial, scientific, and military domain – and the determination of European nations including Britain to participate.

“I think this launch is incredibly important for the U.K.,” says Juliana Suess, research analyst and policy lead on space security at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based defense and security think tank. “Among the few real tangible milestones I would pick out from the government’s recent national space strategy was the sovereign launch capability in 2022.”

Shifting geopolitics of space

Some analysts even see a new space race underway, with powers such as the United States, China, and the European Union committing huge sums of money, and myriad moon missions planned over the coming decade.

More recently, the war in Ukraine has reinforced the critical nature of space technologies, with companies streaming down satellite imagery to bolster intelligence and SpaceX’s Starlink satellites providing crucial telecommunications services to the Ukrainian military. In addition, 36 satellites of OneWeb – an entity partially owned by the British and French governments – lie stranded in Kazakhstan, after Moscow refused to allow their launch without guarantees they would not be used against Russia.

In this increasingly fraught geopolitical climate, and with the importance of space ramping up, developing that sovereign launch capability is surely a boon. Yet it’s also just one piece of a much larger endeavor. 

“U.K. space launch is not the holy grail of U.K. space power,” says Gabriel Elefteriu, director of strategy and space policy at Policy Exchange, another London-based think tank. “It’s a very important and useful addition to our space offering, especially from a commercial perspective ... but we should realize there is much more to do and our ambition needs to go much further.”

The Cornwall launch hints at the current limitations as well as the aspirations.

This will be the maiden launch from U.K. soil of Virgin Orbit’s launch system called Cosmic Girl. Instead of a rocket lifting off vertically from a launchpad, this is a modified Boeing 747. Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket system will be carried by jet to an altitude of 35,000 feet, where it will be dropped and then ignite its own engine to head into space. 

LauncherOne is able to send up to about half a ton of satellites into space. Some of the other spaceports planned for the U.K. will be able to accommodate heavier payloads. SaxaVord, for example, based on the Shetland Islands, hopes to lift up to 1.5 tons, utilizing the more traditional vertical rocket launch. But compare that with SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, which can carry nearly 64 tons, and the difference in scale becomes apparent.

A British focus on satellites

Yet many analysts say the British approach makes sense, as the U.K. alone can never hope to compete with space superpowers such as the U.S. Rather, the emergence of Spaceport Cornwall reflects a decision to focus on partnerships and on an area that the U.K. already does well, namely small satellites. (Many are already built in the U.K., with Glasgow alone manufacturing more of them than any other location in Europe.)

“I think the U.K. has the possibility of becoming a hub ... globally, not just within Europe” for satellite microlaunchers, says Gabriele Redigonda, the research fellow in charge of U.K.-Europe relations in space at the European Space Policy Institute in Vienna. “I’m not saying it will; I’m saying it has a chance.”

The British space push is fueled substantially by private industry. Measured by private funding of space startups, Britain is by far Europe’s biggest player. Yet its government also plays a role. For example, the agency Innovate UK is seeking to nurture promising businesses (one of which is behind a satellite for the coming Cornwall launch) through an effort called Satellite Applications Catapult.

Still, for all the explosive growth of the small-satellite industry, the business case for numerous Europe-based spaceports is unclear. 

“I think it will come down to domestic political drive, wanting the U.K. to have space launch capability,” says Mike Curtis-Rouse, head of access to space at the Satellite Applications Catapult. “Will it be economic? I’m not entirely convinced.”

Building space ties with Europe?

But in a nod to the international ambitions of Britain’s nascent spaceport industry, the first launch will carry not only various British satellites – including the first Welsh one ever to be put into orbit – but also Oman’s first satellite, one from Poland, and a U.S.-British joint mission. 

The Polish one is perhaps most pertinent, as an emblem of continued cooperation between the U.K. and the EU, post-Brexit. Since withdrawing from the European Union, Britain has lost access to the EU’s Galileo global-positioning satellite system, and its participation in another EU program, Copernicus, hangs in doubt.

Yet the U.K. remains part of the European Space Agency, a body separate from the EU. Moreover, the recent merger between OneWeb (a company partly owned by the British government) and Eutelsat (partly French government-owned) proceeded with little difficulty, suggesting that the commercial space sector can continue functioning smoothly, perhaps even lending a boost to cooperation in space relations more widely.

“Certainly the people in the industry want to get the job done,” says Ian Jones, CEO of Goonhilly Earth Station, the world’s only commercial deep-space communications facility, situated some 40 miles farther into Cornwall than the spaceport and set to be involved in tracking the Virgin Orbit launch. “So from that point of view, I think space has a strong ability to bring people together.”

“You know,” continues Mr. Jones, “the astronauts that go into space talk about the overview effect of seeing the Earth without political boundaries. ... Space has always been an area of endeavor that transcends political differences.”

Editor's note: One sentence has been updated to reflect the likely launch timing more accurately.