New York Times // Space UK

The New York Times recently gave me a super interesting feature to accompany a story about Britain’s Space Race, written by Stanley Reed.

Not knowing much about space, it was really intriguing to visit a few sites across the UK and meet some of the people involved in trying to realise Britain’s ambition to become a serious contender in the Space industry.

I travelled to Newquay airport, which has been selected as the launch site for UK built satellites. Building work has recently commenced and Melissa Thorpe would works at the development agency, Spaceport explained the scepticism the project has faced. At Goonhilly – an hour further into Cornwall- a TV satellite is being repurposed for deep space communication and has contracts already with The European Space Agency. I also visited Airbus in Stevenage, where the satellite components are being constructed and also saw the ‘Mars Rover’ machines in action inside the dedicated ‘mars yard’ warehouse. Other startup businesses, such as Oxford Space Systems in Harwell develop and construct the satellite antennas.

Full article can be found here : https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/06/business/britain-satellites-brexit.html