Notice

Projects in receipt of funding (2022 to 2025)

Updated 22 November 2023

European Space Agency (ESA) via UKSA - £122.6 million

FutureEO - ESA’s Earth Observation research and development programme and lays the foundation for new technologies and mission ideas in Earth Observation. By investing in this programme, the UK EO sector will have influence and access to opportunities across the entire EO value chain, including the building and testing of new satellites. This can also help secure UK leadership roles in future EO missions.

TRUTHS - provides climate data that is 10 times more accurate than is currently possible and will be a ‘standards laboratory in space’, setting the ‘gold standard’ reference for climate measurements. Our investment in TRUTHS will enable UK industry to deliver key components of the programme.

Aeolus-2 - building the next generation EO mission to directly measure the wind speed in the atmosphere from space. The data that is generated from this mission will be used by meteorological agencies around the world (including the UK Met Office) to improve forecasts and better prepare countries for high impact weather events as well as providing valuable climate data.

InCubed-2 – this programme funds the development of innovative commercial products and services that generate and exploit the value of Earth Observation imagery and datasets. By investing, UK academia and industry can apply for funding to develop exciting projects from building satellites to ground applications or to develop new EO business models.

Digital Twins Earth - is creating a digital representation of the whole Earth environment which is informed by near real time EO data. This enables the whole UK EO community (industry, academia and government) to get involved in activity from developing the digital infrastructure and data architecture, through to running national scenarios for better decisions making. These “digital twins” couple EO data with AI and modelling techniques to simulate scenarios so we can understand the effects that different interventions might have on complex global systems.

UK Space Agency (UKSA) - £15 million

EO Technology Programme - will develop innovative EO satellite instrumentation to maintain the UK’s position at the forefront of EO capability and expertise. By co-funding innovation with industry and academia, the Programme will help to mature technologies to a level at which they can form satellite mission payloads or be part of viable commercial applications, supporting UK businesses to take advantage of future national and international opportunities.

Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) - £19.3 million

UK EO Climate Information Service (UKEO-CIS) - will produce new climate data, provide more accurate insights into national and international impacts of the climate crisis and help guide the UK towards greater resilience to the effects of climate change.

EO Data Hub - will build a next generation data platform to give the UK a single portal for accessing and processing satellite data to develop new applications and environmental insights. The EO Data Hub is a consortia project between NCEO, RAL Space and NPL and the satellite applications catapult who will deliver it, with inputs from industry and government. It represents a new UK capability enabling access to diverse satellite data sets for the benefit of UK industry, academia and government, particularly for applications in climate, finance, carbon services and agriculture.

SENSE Centre for Doctoral Training Programme for EO - The Satellite Data in Environmental Science (SENSE) Centre will train the next generation of earth observation leaders, with the expertise and knowledge to address earth system challenges. This funding will enable the SENSE CDT to support an additional cohort of up to 20 PhD studentships. This is vital to continue the highly skilled workforce the UK needs to advance the UK EO sector into the future.

Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) - £14.73 million

UK EO Marine & Climate Mission Development Programme - will deliver early preparation to gather UK requirements, research and industry strengths, and space technologies to build and operate a UK-led Earth Observing system to support the fight against climate change and achieving Net Zero. By working with government, academia, industry and international partners, the project will capture and translate new climate and environmental challenges of the UK and its surrounding waters into a set of mission technologies and concepts, that will help the UK prepare for future challenges.

Small Satellite Calibration Facility - will build a national centre for calibrating and testing small, cube and nano satellites, which will de-risk missions for UK businesses and help overcome the barriers that frequently block new space technologies from launching satellites. Aimed at supporting smaller companies, start-ups and SMEs, it will give UK companies a competitive edge in international markets and provide improved data quality and reliability for their EO missions.

UK/Australia EO AgroClimate Programme - will fund projects that use EO data and technology to address the national and global challenge of optimising agricultural productivity in a changing climate. The projects will bring together the best researchers from the UK and Australia to develop EO solutions optimising and monitoring agriculture productivity and climate change.

Surface Temperature Radiometer Network - will build and deploy a network of radiometers designed to measure surface temperatures to very high accuracy that will be used to validate the data produced by the constellations of infrared remote sensing satellites. This will improve the accuracy of the data generated, directly impacting weather and climate forecasts.

Met Office - £11.73 million

Transatlantic Data Science Academy - an international training and skills exchange programme that will provide Continued Professional Development opportunities between the UK and the USA. The academy will also support student training and exchanges of experts through courses and opportunities to learn EO sector skills, such as data processing and data analysis. This is vital to sustain the highly skilled workforce needed to advance the UK EO sector into the future.

TWInning capability for the Natural Environment – (TWINE) will support the use of Digital Twins in the natural environment, which will help realize the value of this transformative platform technology for addressing challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss and air quality. This new national capability enables the UK to use Machine Learning and AI methods to enhance the use of EO data and test the impacts of different scenarios and interventions (policy, business and investment, regulation etc) to help make better decisions on improving our environment.

UK Marine and Climate Advisory Service (MCAS) - will develop satellite enabled products to improve the UK’s national weather, air quality and maritime forecasts. It will enable better climate data models that will help the UK become resilient to climate risks and will develop new satellite-enabled applications that create new services and business opportunities.

Innovate UK - £4.21 million

Innovation in EO - will fund a variety of industrial research projects that are focused on the uses of EO for novel commercial applications. These projects will de-risk the development of new technology and applications which will grow businesses in the UK.