Spaceport Cornwall calling<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got three organisations coming over, each representing a different slice of space system,\u201d British High Commission technology lead James Araci told the Herald.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s RAL Space, the UK\u2019s main space laboratory.\u201d The initials stand for Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, named in part after New Zealand\u2019s Sir Ernest Rutherford.<\/p>\n
\u201cGeospatial Ventures represents UK businesses. They\u2019re a really cool, fast-moving Earth observation satellite data company and they do a lot of kind of infrastructure monitoring for airports and railway companies in the UK. They\u2019re quite interested in seeing how New Zealand does things,\u201d Araci said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd finally, we\u2019ve got Spaceport Cornwall.\u201d<\/p>\n
Araci says the UK facility is similar to our T\u0101whaki National Aerospace Centre \u2013 the runway and support facilities at Kait\u014drete, south of Christchurch, used by Dawn Aerospace, Kea Aerospace and others for horizontal launches.<\/p>\n
The UK delegates are \u201cquite keen to encourage New Zealand firms who want to set up in the Northern Hemisphere to base themselves at Spaceport Cornwall and connect into the ecosystem there in the southeast of England\u201d.<\/p>\n
Sir Richard Branson\u2019s Virgin Orbit operated out of Spaceport Cornwall, a horizontal launch facility hosted by a regional airport. Branson\u2019s start-up (separate to his space-tourist-focused Virgin Galactic) attempted to get payloads to space via a rocket released from the underbelly of a Boeing 747. After it went bust in 2023, Kiwi space powerhouse Rocket Lab swooped in<\/a> to buy Virgin Orbit\u2019s manufacturing assets in the US.<\/p>\n Ironically, the New Zealand aerospace firm that personifies New Zealand-UK co-operation, Syos Aerospace, which operates out of Mount Maunganui and Fareham and last year won a \u00a37.8m contract with the UK Ministry of Defence, doesn\u2019t fall under the UK Space Strategy.<\/p>\n Syos founder Sam Vye will be speaking as part of the \u201cLeaning into security and defence contracting\u201d panel at the summit today, which will also feature the New Zealand Defence Force\u2019s Air Commodore Andy Scott and the New Zealand Army\u2019s Brigadier Matt Weston.<\/p>\n But Dawn Aerospace (whose uncrewed Spaceplane flies to 100km, or the edge of space) has attracted questions. The firm was peppered with questions by a member of the UK delegation during a site visit yesterday.<\/p>\n \u201cHowever, High-Altitude Platform Stations (Haps) unmanned aircraft that operate in the stratosphere, like those developed by Kea Aerospace, are seen as valuable components of future Earth Observation projects,\u201d Araci said in an email.<\/p>\n Hence, Dawn\u2019s Christchurch stablemate Kea is on British visitors\u2019 radar.<\/p>\n \u201cThe UK is looking to combine Space-based Earth observation data with data from Haps for climate and biodiversity monitoring. The UK delegation will be discussing ideas like this with Kiwi companies like Kea Aerospace.\u201d<\/p>\n Such collaboration would benefit both countries, Araci said.<\/p>\n The UK delegation includes:<\/p>\n Ross Hulbert<\/a>, head of engagement at Spaceport Cornwall; Dr Hugh Mortimer,<\/a> associate director of the National Laboratories and Harwell Space Cluster manager at RAL Space; and Paul Bhatia<\/a>, managing director of Geospatial Ventures <\/p>\n Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald\u2019s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer. He has recently written about the size of the NZ aerospace industry<\/a> and anticipated protests at this year\u2019s NZ Aerospace Summit<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spaceport Cornwall calling \u201cWe\u2019ve got three organisations coming over, each representing a different slice of space system,\u201d British…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[1402,4765,11429,28824,4487,1744,4381,138874,2082,10937,78,1426,26477,19133,111,139,69,12968,5898,1518,147,392,23850,1613,80],"class_list":["post-616876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-aerospace","tag-annual","tag-arrive","tag-arrived","tag-christchurch","tag-collaboration","tag-customers","tag-delegation","tag-for","tag-hunt","tag-in","tag-investment","tag-leaders","tag-looking","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-opportunities","tag-partnerships","tag-research","tag-science","tag-space","tag-summit","tag-uk","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}