King Charles travelled to the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire earlier this month, where he formally opened the UK Space and Defence Gateway, a new centre intended to bring together government, industry, academia and investors working in the space and defence fields.
The visit also took him to RAL Space, the country’s national space laboratory, run by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), which has spent more than sixty years developing technology used in hundreds of space missions, including satellites that monitor climate change and environmental damage from orbit.
The new Gateway has been built around the King’s Astra Carta initiative, a set of principles he launched during his time as Prince of Wales aimed at making the space industry more environmentally sustainable. To mark the connection, the Sustainable Markets Initiative used the occasion to announce a fresh partnership with Harwell that will set up an investment council and install an Astra Carta Seal inside the new building.
On arrival, the King was welcomed by Dr Barbara Ghinelli, who founded the Gateway and directs innovation clusters at Harwell for STFC, along with Space Minister Baroness Liz Lloyd, the Chief of the Air Staff Air Chief Marshal Sir Harvey Smyth, and the Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, Marjorie Glasgow. He then toured RAL Space’s facilities with its director, Dr Sarah Beardsley, and Professor Michele Dougherty, who holds the title of Astronomer Royal and chairs STFC.
Harwell has grown into one of Britain’s main clusters for space activity, hosting the European Space Agency, the UK Space Agency and the Satellite Applications Catapult among other organisations. At the Gateway’s central Quad building, the King watched demonstrations from several companies expanding rapidly in the sector, among them Astroscale, Magdrive, Open Cosmos, Orbitfab, Oxford Space Systems and Space Solar. He also met figures including ESA’s Director General, Dr Josef Aschbacher, and Harwell’s managing director, Jim Stretton.
The visit closed with the King unveiling a commemorative plaque made from recycled plastic to mark the Gateway’s official opening.
Speaking afterwards, Baroness Lloyd described the opening as a major milestone for Britain’s space industry, saying the government wants to build up national capabilities that lead to better space services and stronger export opportunities. Dr Ghinelli said the Gateway would function less as a single building and more as a new way of connecting civil and defence space work across government, business, universities and investors. Professor Dougherty and Dr Beardsley both pointed to the Astra Carta’s sustainability goals as central to how the sector should grow, with Dr Beardsley noting that testing satellites at RAL Space before launch helps turn early ideas into working missions.
Source: UKRI
