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Good morning. I am pleased to be here for the first ever
International Space Day at the Farnborough Air Show. I expect this to
become an important element at the Show as we come to recognise the
increasing importance of space in our lives. Especially its potential
for use in science, commercial activities and the environment.
I am particularly pleased to welcome my colleagues, Admiral Steidle, the
NASA Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems, and Jean-Jacques
Dordain, the Director General of the European Space Agency. Their
presence emphasises that space is increasingly an international
enterprise. Recent achievements, particularly in space exploration, show
that nations can achieve far more by working together than we could by
working alone.
I look forward to hearing from my colleagues about their visions for
space, but first I would like to talk about how we are working together
successfully. I will also take the opportunity to explain the
distinctive way in which the UK seeks to use space. Finally I will look
to the future at what I hope we can achieve by working within Europe and
with our colleagues from the United States. I hope this will give an
idea of the importance of space to the UK and the tremendous value we
place on working with international partners.
Working within Europe has always been central to the UK's work in space,
whether in space science, commercial space applications or environmental
monitoring. This is a time of great change for Europe, and for the
European space community. It is also a time of great opportunity and I
look forward to the United Kingdom's deep involvement in developing a
European space programme.
We have only to look at the Rosetta mission, the Galileo satellite
navigation system or the Envisat Earth Observation satellite to
appreciate the scale of projects made possible by working through ESA
and how ESA offers the UK a means of delivering our strategic vision in
practical terms.
Rosetta will carry out the first ever experiments on the surface of a
comet and will also visit two asteroids on the way, reaching its
destination in 2014. Such missions need vision, foresight and patience,
the benefits of which are clear from the first-rate scientific work of
Mars Express.
The Galileo system, meanwhile, is a strong example of one of the UK's
main priorities: using space where it offers a cost-effective way of
meeting our broader objectives. It will be the first satellite
navigation and timing system designed for civilian use and is expected
to offer a huge range of high-quality services and applications. It is a
tremendous example of how ESA and the European Union can work together
effectively for the interests of their Member States. The project
continues to move forward and the recent agreement between the EU and
the US means that Galileo will complement existing GPS services.
Envisat, on the other hand, shows that space also offers a unique
capacity for meeting another of the UK's objectives, this time in
environmental sciences, providing crucial information about
environmental change. Much of the spacecraft and several key instruments
were built in the UK and Envisat is an excellent example of how ESA
projects offer access to world-class environmental science.
Looking further afield, the UK is also working more closely and more
often with American counterparts at NASA and the NOAA Weather Service,
particularly on space science and Earth Observation. We have often
combined effectively on a bilateral basis just as the UK also works with
NASA through ESA.
For example, we have all been impressed by the first exciting images
transmitted to Earth from Cassini-Huygens ('hoy-genns'). This joint ESA-NASA
mission to Saturn is on the verge of providing answers to long-standing
questions about our Solar System. NASA's Cassini spacecraft is now
circling the planet while later this year ESA's Huygens probe will
plunge into the cloudy atmosphere of its largest moon, Titan.
The UK contributed instruments to both Huygens and Cassini, and I share
the anticipation and excitement of our scientists waiting anxiously for
results that will unravel the mysteries of the ringed planet.
The mission is a great success story of Europe and the US working
together to achieve common goals with clear responsibilities. It is a
useful example as we consider how different visions of space exploration
will be taken forward on the global scale. Indeed, this is the subject
of an expert seminar later this morning.
Trans-Atlantic collaboration is also driving forward advances in Earth
Observation science. Particularly important to the UK is our
contribution of the High Resolution Dynamics Limb Sounder (HIRDLS)
instrument to NASA's Aura mission, which will study the Earth's
atmosphere with unprecedented accuracy.
As well as the value of co-operation, these examples demonstrate the
potential of space to be harnessed as a tool for achieving our wider
goals and to enhance our quality of life.
This brings me to my second theme. Because of its hugely diverse
potential, we are inevitably forced to prioritise and make difficult
choices: this is what Governments are paid to do. And the choices of the
UK may differ a little from those of our friends overseas. But I see
this difference as a clear strength.
Our strategic vision is to make the UK the most advanced user of
space-based systems in Europe for science, commercial activities and the
environment. The Government therefore concentrates investment in space
activities that deliver these objectives in the most cost-effective way.
I would like to explain briefly how this vision translates into actual
space activities.
Among the most important of the commercial applications of space are
satellite communications and navigation. These bring the world's
citizens closer together and make its most remote parts more accessible
to mankind. The potential of satellites to deliver broadband Internet
access to remote communities and to deliver accurate positional
information is being harnessed at both national and European level.
A key priority of the UK is our work in Earth Observation, some examples
of which I mentioned earlier. The information that satellites can
provide helps us to understand the environmental challenges facing our
planet and also to respond more effectively to natural and humanitarian
disasters around the world. At the same time, our industry is busy
building new Earth observation spacecraft for both ESA and international
customers.
For example, Aeolus will pioneer the measurement of global wind profiles
from space when launched in 2007, while the commercial RapidEye
consortium have selected UK industry to build its fleet of small imaging
spacecraft.
Investment in space science projects is also of great importance to UK
and European space programmes, as they offer us the exciting possibility
of answering fundamental questions about the origins of life and of our
universe. Participating in important space programmes also means that
our new generation of scientists are exposed to the very cutting edge of
modern technology and engineering challenges.
The first discoveries of Mars Express show the value of investing in
space science. Its direct measurement of water ice and of methane -
possibly from volcanic activity or even from some form of biology - are
interesting enough. But the 3-D colour images it is sending back to
Earth are genuinely groundbreaking. This is a fantastic European success
story we can be proud of.
It has also been astounding to see evidence of how the pressure of
scientific challenges can drive innovation. For example, instruments
developed for the Beagle 2 probe are currently being adapted for
essential work in hospitals. The complexity of recent and ongoing
projects shows that space really is at the cutting edge.
These high-profile missions also have the power to inspire young people
to pursue their interests in science. Governments and space agencies
have a unique opportunity to show that science and engineering are
exciting subjects, pushing against the limits of human knowledge and
achievement, and as Beagle 2 demonstrated robotic exploration can be
made just as exciting as manned space.
The contribution that space exploration can make to science makes it an
important aspect of any space programme. Considering the subject of
today's seminar, I would like to use this opportunity to say a few words
about Government policy in this important area. It is here above all
that our priorities may differ somewhat from those of our friends.
Our focus is very much on exploiting robotic technology. The great
advances made in this field offer us an excellent and cost-effective way
of expanding our knowledge of our own solar system and of the universe.
I have already mentioned Rosetta, Mars Express and Cassini-Huygens
missions, parts of a series of top quality missions using robotic
technology, which currently offers by far the greatest scientific value
relative to investment. We can look forward to the launch next year of
ESA's highly cost-effective Venus Express mission. This will investigate
the 'runaway global-warming' suffered by our planetary neighbour, and
may help climate modellers here on Earth.
Exploration does not just mean going out into the Solar System. One of
our most exciting and high priority science projects is actually a kind
of time machine. In less than a decade, the joint NASA/ESA/Canadian
'James Webb Space Telescope' will be launched. Aboard it will be the
'Mid-Infra-red Instrument'. It will study objects so far away that the
light left them when the Universe was a tenth of its present age. This
instrument is a fifty-fifty NASA/European collaboration for which the UK
is leading the European contribution. So again, we have the UK at the
heart of world-class space working in an international framework.
This brings me to my final theme of where we could work with our
partners in the future. This is closely linked to the increased
political interest in space on both sides of the Atlantic. Admiral
Steidle will be talking about President Bush's plans for a return to the
moon and for onward journeys to Mars. I am excited to see NASA taking
this initiative forward. I look forward to learning of projects where we
may share common objectives, and which could offer scope for working
together. ESA's 'Aurora' Exploration programme has been under
development for some years and clearly has many similarities: Aurora is
beginning to take shape and I have great hopes that it will develop into
a proposal that will offer the UK an opportunity to meet our objectives,
with a strong focus on robotic exploration.
In Europe we have also seen important political developments affecting
the space community. The new EU Constitutional Treaty, agreed between
European Heads of Government last month, refers to the need to develop a
European space programme. I look forward to the UK playing a full part
in developing that programme for the benefit of all European citizens.
As the examples I have given show, space has enormous potential to
improve our lives. They also show that this potential can be realised
most effectively by working together with international partners. We do
take different approaches in some areas, and often set different
priorities and objectives. But we also have far more in common, and
working together offers us by far the best way of achieving our diverse
objectives. I look forward to hearing the thoughts of Mr Dordain and
Admiral Steidle.
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