the-BA : Advocation of UK astronauts

By Wendy Barnaby

A high-level government advisory committee has recommended that the UK should raise its game in human and robotic space exploration, the BA Festival of Science in York heard on Thursday.

"The UK should take early steps for a future role in the human exploration of space," said Professor Frank Close, Chairman of the UK Space Exploration Working Group (SEWG). He was presenting its report to the Festival.

The scientists envisage a ramping-up of UK space activities in the next five years, culminating in sending two UK astronauts to the International Space Station before 2015. Their ambition is to put a UK astronaut on the Moon by 2020.

"The Moon is one of the greatest archaeological sites in the solar system," said Professor Monica Grady of the Open University.

"It's been impacted by asteroids and comets over the last 4.5 billion years, and fractions of them are preserved on that lunar surface. Asteroids hit the Earth – bits could have been blasted off the early Earth, and those bits might be preserved in the lunar soil.

"This would give us an opportunity to look for some of the traces of the earliest life on Earth, which we don't have now because it’s been destroyed by geological processing," she said.

The scientists envisage an international space station on the Moon, which would carry out experiments in astronomy, geology and health sciences.

The UK currently spends £207 annually on its civil space programme. This would need to increase dramatically five years down the track.

"But the space industry puts back into the UK economy nine times what it spends," said Professor Grady.

Committing the UK to such a space future would, the researchers said, enable it to catch up with its European partners, who are already more active in space exploration.

"I liken this to the 1850s gold rush," said Professor Martin Sweeting of the space company SSTL.

"Some people found gold, and others didn't. But the people who made the money were those who supplied the transport, the hotels and the water on the way.

"That's what the UK can do: we can support the infrastructure of space exploration, with robotic assembly, communications services and renewable energy technology," he said.

"Can we afford not to do it?" asked Professor Keith Mason of the Science and Technology Facilities Council. "It's about the future of the UK in the world economy, and whether we'll be competitive or not."

Professor Close also saw a human space exploration programme as a way of inspiring students to take up science and engineering, to reverse the current shortage of students in these areas.

"There's evidence that the Apollo programme had a stimulus in the USA at the time. It resulted in secondary-school students taking up science and technology at college," he said.

The SEWG explored how the UK could use the recent Global Exploration Strategy, drawn up by the world's space-faring nations to map the way forward for international space exploration.

After a discussion last week with Ian Pearson, Minister of State at Defra, Dr David Williams of the British National space Centre said he was "prepared to evaluate whether the decision taken 20 yrs ago not to enter a manned programme is still valid for today."

"My job is to evaluate this report, decide where the UK should be on space exploration, and recommend that to the government. There will be manned and unmanned space exploration: where should the UK be in that?" he asked.

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