COSMIC Oxfordshire companies have been showcasing space planes and satellite software at the UK Space Conference this week.

Companies from the Harwell “space cluster” and Culham Science Centre went to the 2013 event held in Glasgow and organised by the UK Space Agency.

Reaction Engines in Culham is building a revolutionary space plane and announced yesterday it will use £60m of Government funding.

Satellite imaging firm Magellium, based at Harwell, is celebrating a £90,000 boost, which will help satellites become powerful enough to tell the difference between carrots and potatoes from space.

They are just two of the companies in the Science Vale UK area which are bringing the UK space industry into the 21st century.

Reaction Engines is set to receive a £60m grant from the Government’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).

Technical director Richard Varvill said: “This is a funding increase of a whole order of magnitude.

“Now we can bring the whole SABRE and Skylon project into real life.

“To private investors, it is a good signal when the Government invests.

“Contrary to popular belief, the Government is relatively astute on this sort of thing.”

The Skylon space plane will be the first plane that can travel into space from a runway takeoff, and fly to the other side of the world in four hours.

The key piece of technology is SABRE (Synergistic Air Breathing Rocket Engine), which cools incoming air from 1,000 C to -150 C in a fraction of a second, and uses that in place of traditional liquid oxygen fuel.

The next phase of the project will see the first engine built in many small parts by contractors around the world.

Magellium employs nine people at its base in Harwell, and processes images taken by satellites for a range of industries from defence to agriculture. In June Magellium was awarded £90,000 from the Technology Strategy Board for a new project to identify crops from space.

Magellium hopes the technology could be of interest to governments, agronomists and farmers.

Speaking from the conference in Glasgow yesterday, UK managing director Michael Lawrence said: “Being in the Harwell space cluster gives us a chance to network and go to workshops. It is a good melting pot.”

The European Space Agency (ESA) Business Incubation Centre (BIC) at Harwell helps high-tech start-up companies find non-space applications for space technology.

One of those companies is Oxford NanoSystems, which uses produces nano-coatings for machinery which help transfer heat and stop corrosion in a variety of industries.

Company co-owner Alex Reip said: “Because we have been able to use any of the labs here at Harwell much cheaper than we would be able to otherwise, it has given us a really good starting point to create a technology business.”

OUT OF THIS WORLD

COSMIC companies who were at the UK Space Conference in Glasgow.

  • Reaction Engines – Founded in 1989 by Alan Bond to develop an “air breathing” rocket engine. At its base in Culham, Reaction has developed super-lightweight heat exchangers, 100 times lighter than the previous technology, which will cool incoming air from 1,000C to -150C in less than 1/100th of a second.
  • Magellium – A French firm which employs 150 people in France opened its UK base at the Satellite Applications Catapult Centre in Harwell in 2009 to take advantage of the “space cluster”. The company undertakes research and development for other organisations and carries out its own projects.
  • ESA – The European Space Agency’s Business Incubation Centre at Harwell is currently helping more than 20 small start-up companies to develop non-space applications for space technology.