Space

As with Industry 4.0, we are seeing a revolution in the way Space assets are created and operated. Privately financed missions and increasing venture capital is changing industry attitudes towards investment cycles and risk. Supply chains are diversifying with more SMEs, new nations and other sectors joining the Space industry. Lower cost access to Space is creating an open playing field with middle and low-income economies, start-ups, universities and citizens now looking to play their part.

Through improved measurement technologies and techniques we can provide:

- Fast and robust space qualification 

- Product verification across diverse supply chains 

- Accurate measurement of spacecraft trajectories 

- Characterisation of new materials and electronic components 

- Qualification test procedures and standards relevant for a Space 4.0 industry 

Large international programmes and privately funded Earth observation missions are creating a plethora of data from Space. The challenge facing the industry is to transform this data into insights that can be relied upon by government and industry decision makers.

NPL is central to the provision of trusted and traceable data from Space through:

- Calibration from characterised ground sites 

- In-flight calibration traceable to SI 

- Accessible and lower cost instrument calibration 

- Uncertainty propagation analysis 

- Quality assured data frameworks

Infrastructure is increasingly reliant on time signals from Space. Energy, transport and telecommunications networks of the future will push the accuracy and ubiquity of timing services to enable autonomous vehicles, smart grids and 5G.

Through precise measurement of time and timing signals we can:

- Increase ubiquity of timing services

- Create a global timing infrastructure traceable to SI

- Enable new services and capabilities only possible with new clock technology

NPL is providing timescales and references for big science projects and global navigation networks. We have been pioneers in atomic clock technology since its advent in 1955 and continue to be world leaders in the development of clock technologies.