His Majesty the King officially opens the UK Space and Defence Gateway at Harwell Science and Innovation Campus

Harwell Science and Innovation Campus. Photo courtesy of Harwell

His Majesty King Charles III visited the UK's largest space cluster to officially open the UK Space and Defence Gateway, an initiative aligned with the principles of the Sustainable Markets Initiative’s (SMI) Astra Carta, a global framework launched by His Majesty, as Prince of Wales, to ensure the space sector supports a sustainable future.

The Gateway will be a dedicated hub for the space and defence sectors, driving national and global collaboration between government, academia, innovators and industry. It will focus on linking innovation to investment, building collaborative partnerships to shape tomorrow's space and defence economy, and helping businesses to sustainably start, grow and scale in the UK. The Gateway will be based in a new co-working and events space at the heart of the Harwell Space Cluster.

During the visit, the Sustainable Markets Initiative announced a partnership with the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus to advance the principles of the SMI’s Astra Carta and establish an investment council. The partnership will bring together leaders from across the space ecosystem to accelerate practical collaboration, innovation and investment in support of a more sustainable space economy, The Astra Carta Seal will be installed in the UK Space and Defence Gateway.

The King was greeted on arrival by: Dr Barbara Ghinelli, Founder of the UK Space and Defence Gateway and Director of Innovation Clusters and Harwell Campus at the UKRI Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC); Space Minister, Baroness Liz Lloyd; Air Chief Marshal Sir Harvey Smyth, Chief of the Air Staff and the Lord-Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, Marjorie Glasgow BEM. His Majesty then visited STFC’s RAL Space facility, the UK's National Space Laboratory, hosted by Dr Sarah Beardsley, Director of RAL Space, and Professor Michele Dougherty, Astronomer Royal, Executive Chair of STFC and UK Research and Innovation Space Senior Responsible Officer.

For over sixty years RAL Space has provided the specialist expertise and end-to-end capabilities that underpin space applications around the world, including Earth observation work that supports action on climate change, biodiversity loss, and resilience to environmental change. It has contributed to more than 200 instruments in space and has played a key role in establishing the UK as a competitive force in the global space economy.

RAL Space is one of the anchor organisations of the Harwell Space Cluster and a cornerstone of the UK's space sector. The cluster is Europe’s largest concentration of space organisations, supporting more than 120 public and private organisations, including national research laboratories, sovereign test facilities, start-ups, scale-ups and multinational corporations, alongside more than 330 defence and security organisations within the OBC Defence and Security Cluster.

Other anchor organisations on the campus include the European Space Agency (ESA), which established a major hub for satellite communications and commercialisation at Harwell in 2009; the UK Space Agency; the ESA Business Incubation Centre; and the Satellite Applications Catapult.

The King then visited the Quad, home of the UK Space and Defence Gateway, where His Majesty saw demonstrations from fast-growing space companies Astroscale, Magdrive, Open Cosmos, Orbitfab, Oxford Space Systems and Space Solar, as well as from ESA. The King met Gateway champions including Dr. Josef Aschbacher, Director General of ESA; Jim Stretton, Managing Director, Harwell Campus; John Abbott, CEO, Satellite Applications Catapult and Doug Liddle, Chair of UK Space – alongside other senior figures from government, industry, academia and the investor community.

To conclude the visit, His Majesty unveiled a plaque, made of sustainable material based on recycled plastic, to mark the official opening of the UK Space and Defence Gateway.