Meeting of the Parliament 27 April 2023
I am delighted to host today’s debate on Scotland’s space sector, which is a Scottish success story and a sector that, in opening up new frontiers, is delivering benefits for humankind, our planet and our economy. I hope that today’s debate will be the first in a series of debates that shines a light on Scotland’s transformative and growing cutting-edge sectors of the future.
The industrial revolution is the name for a time of great change in industry, technology and science. We are all familiar with the industrial revolution. In the 1780s, which was the lift-off decade for the industrial revolution, Scotland played a leading role and paved the way for what came after and for the modern world.
I believe that this decade is the lift-off decade for the further revolutions that are changing our lives and shaping our futures, whether through rapid advances in technology, the net zero agenda, artificial intelligence or other developments. Once again, ingenuity, innovation and invention, and our talented people, are allowing our relatively small country to play a leading role. The space sector is an industry that exemplifies the pace of change and our country’s leadership.
When people think of space, they might think about NASA and Sputnik, the race to put man on the moon or the enormous rockets and shuttles that took astronauts into orbit, but that is no longer what space is about. Space has become a fundamental aspect of modern-day life. It provides us with services that help us to navigate, to stay connected, to use our credit cards and banking apps anywhere in the world, to monitor climate change and to predict the weather.
Commercial entities are driving growth, the innovation that we need and competition to satisfy an insatiable requirement for data. In 2018, there were an estimated 2,000 active satellites in orbit. Today, that number is about 5,000 and, by 2030, it is forecast to reach 27,000.
The global market for the space sector is projected to grow to £490 billion by 2030, and that is just the start. A wealth of future opportunities—from space-based energy to asteroid mining and in-orbit manufacturing, to name but a few visions for what might happen in space—could result in science fiction becoming scientific fact.
Asteroid mining might sound far fetched, but members might not be aware of asteroid 16 Psyche, a metallic body that exists within the main asteroid belt. One sixteenth of the diameter of the earth’s moon, it contains vast quantities of precious metals whose worth is estimated to be many times that of the global economy.
Although our Scottish space sector has grown rapidly in the past 10 years, it has had a strong academic base, predominantly focused on earth science in Edinburgh, for far longer. That strong base continues to this day. For example, Scottish skills and innovation played an important role in the development of the James Webb telescope. However, it is the miniaturisation and standardisation of spacecraft in the past decade that has allowed Scotland’s space sector to flourish.