Funding for a swathe of international partnerships and projects in STEM education has been announced by the UK Space Agency, with collaborations to progress space research and opportunities for learning.
The Science and Exploration Bilateral Programme will be looking to support collaboration with global institutions. The driving force behind this is the need to progress space research and problem-solving worldwide. Alongside that funding, the Space to Learn scheme will look to continue inspiring younger people that are interested in space, whilst also improving access to careers in STEM.
Dr Paul Bate, Chief Executive of the UK Space Agency, said:
“Successful international partnerships not only support the immediate mission or research area; they help us develop long-term research relationships address the critical challenges we face on Earth and in space.
“This new bilateral funding multiplies up on our agency’s impact by bringing in international investment. This helps to galvanise global innovation, drive up investment in the UK, deliver new missions and capabilities, and to champion the power of space to improve lives and understand the universe.
“As the UK’s space ambitions increase, investing in STEM programmes is equally critical. We want to make sure that every young person across all communities can be inspired through space, imagining new possibilities and innovations to which they can contribute, drawing on their growing STEM knowledge, and having fun learning along the way.”
Organisations in the United Kingdom will be linked with the United States, Japan, Canada and Europe, with the first nine projects that are selected for funding through the bilateral programme. This will see £2.3 million worth of funding from the UK Space Agency allocated to developing proposals for new, collaborative space science and exploration missions. One such project will see a team from London working with the University of New Hampshire to help with the design of magnetometers for NASA’s HelioSwarm Mission. This mission will work to improve our understanding of space weather by measuring solar winds through a swarm of nine small spacecraft.
Funding worth £4.3 million will be used by the UK Space Agency to progress four major educational projects through the Space to Learn programme, with this including:
- Engaging 40,000 students of the National Space Academy through a series of 1,000 specialised masterclasses.
- Supporting the Jon Egging Trust’s Blue Skies initiative to deliver 28,000 hours of space-related education resources to students.
- Exploring the relevance of UK space science to the future health and sustainability of the Earth through Discovery Centre’s Our World from Space programme.
The Space Inspirations scheme, run by the European Space Education and Resource Office, will also be supported through the funding boost, with regional volunteers from the space sector working with more than one million children across the country. In doing so, they help to create learning experiences that will support young people to engage with the space sector in a way that they can connect with.
