Indian-origin minister Alok Sharma announces UK's £1M investment to tackle space debris

UK Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Alok Sharma on September 16 anunced an investment of GBP one million in a bid to tackle dangers presented by debris to satellites. Indian-origin minister confirmed that government investment amount will be divided between seven projects that will develop new sensor techlogy or artificial intelligence (AI) to monitor hazardous debris. 

UK government along with country’s ncy and Ministry of Defence (MoD) signed formal agreement, saying that it contributes to Britain’s opportunity to benefit from mega-constellations of satellites.  ditionally, ncy and MoD have also signed an agreement to work toger on monitoring hazards in orbit. officials will also be tracking so-called ‘ junk’ which could pose a threat to International Station (ISS) and its crew. 

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Sharma said, “Millions of pieces of junk orbiting earth present a significant threat to UK satellite systems which provide vital services that we all take for granted - from mobile communications to wear forecasting”. 

He ded, “By developing new AI and sensor techlogy, seven pioneering projects we are backing today will significantly strengn UK's capabilities to monitor se hazardous objects, helping to create new jobs and protect services we rely on in our everyday lives”. 

officials have estimated that re are approximately 160 million objects in orbit, which daily consists of debris - which could collide with satellites. UK government informed that only a fraction of this debris can currently be tracked and avoided by working satellites. y furr ded that it has a significant opportunity to benefit from new of satellite mega-constellations, which is a vast network me up of hundreds or even thousands of craft. 

Graham Turck, who is Chief Executive of UK ncy, said, “In this new of megaconstellations UK has an unmissable opportunity to le way in monitoring and tackling this junk. This funding will help us grasp this opportunity and in doing so create sought after expertise and new high skill jobs across country”. 

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Projects that are being offered funding 

projects that are receiving support include Lift Me Off, who will develop and test machine learning algorithms to distinguish between satellites and debris, and Fujitsu who are combining machine learning and quantum-inspired processing to improve mission planning to remove debris. Two or companies, Deimos and rrn and Security, will be developing a new optical sensor to track objects from UK, while Andor will enhance ir astromy camera in a bid to track and map ever-smaller sized debris. 

Ar company, D-Orbit UK will use a -based sensor on ir recently launched satellite platform to capture ims of objects and couple with Passive Bistatic rar techniques developed by University of Strathclyde. Meanwhile, government also informed that two furr projects are yet to have ir funding confirmed.

(With PTI inputs) 

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