Another bad indicator relating to the UK’s space effort
A space junk removal demo mission first proposed in 2024 by the United Kingdom’s space agency has apparently missed a deadline for issuing the final contract award to one of two startups to fly the mission.
The UK Space Agency has missed a deadline to award a £75.6 million contract for the country’s first mission to capture and remove dead satellites from low Earth orbit.
A call for Phase 3 of the mission’s development was published in July 2025, with the contract initially expected to be awarded by 30 March 2026. However, in its final annual report as an independent entity, published on 14 July, UKSA admitted that the contract award had been delayed. The agency is now targeting summer 2026 but has not explained the reason for the delay or provided a more precise timetable.
The two companies are Astroscale (based in Japan with a UK division) and Clearspace, which has been attempting to launch a junk removal mission for the European Space Agency now for almost a decade, with nothing getting off the ground.
This delay should not be a surprise. The Labor government that is presently in power has been in the process of shutting down the space agency, even as it has allocated a half billion dollars for space-related government projects. It has also done nothing to eliminate the red tape that is squelching its private space industry.
It thus makes great sense that this contract hasn’t been issued. For one, the bureaucracy involved is probably in chaos as the Labor government rearranges deck chairs. For another, there is probably little interest by the private sector to do any work in the UK, because the red tape there is stifling, and has already bankrupted two rocket startups and one spaceport. It is very possible both companies declined to bid. Or if they did, the confusion in the government made any decisions impossible.
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“””the bureaucracy involved is probably in chaos as the Labor government rearranges deck chairs”””
What do you want to bet that the bureaucracy and the bureaucrats will survive and continue, even after the UK space agency is defunct? They will find something else to regulate to death.
Notice I did not say throwing the deck chairs overboard, to clean house. It is a bureaucracy, supported by Labor. They will move those chair about without accomplishing anything.
even as it has allocated a half billion dollars for space-related government projects
Bob, why should anyone be surprised? Labour has been avowedly socialist since its birth. It greatest triumph is the unspeakably awful National Health System.
Fun anecdote:
1979. We were stationed at Lakenheath AFB, near Ely. My brother got the flu, and rather than go to the base hospital, he wanted to experience the British Health Care system. I went with him. Line out the door. After some considerable wait, the nurse saw him, and told him a doctor could see him in two weeks. “I’ll be better, or dead, by that time.” We left; sans medical care.
A sister went to school at McGill University. Tore her ACL. Fixed for ‘free’, but she had to wait a year for the procedure. Socialized medicine is favored by those who have not experienced it.