Minister David Willetts gives keynote at UCL on space science

David Willetts, Minister of State for Universities and Science, today paid tribute to the pioneering role that UCL has played in the history of UK space science. Mr Willetts gave the keynote address on the final morning of a three-day visit to UCL by eminent space scientists from the Institute of Biomedical Problems and other leading research institutes in Russia. He said: 'It's particularly right that this cooperation in science between Russia and the UK should be having this conference here, because there is a shared history: the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, founded in 1953, is an important part of UCL, and indeed led to the launch in 1957 of the UK Skylark in exactly the same year as Russia launched Sputnik. 'Although the UK space programme has not got the level of prominent achievements as the Russian space programme, nevertheless we do have a very significant space industry here in the UK ' a very significant commercial sector, and a very strong research and academic sector.' Mr Willetts pointed out that UK science and engineering teams are currently involved in more than 20 active missions, and that the UK has about £5.6 billion of economic output directly linked to its space sector, which supports 68,000 jobs across the British economy. He also referred to the creation in March of this year of the UK Space Agency, which has been designed to bring together the different parts of the public sector that have an interest in and contribution to space activities, in order to lead to stronger management of UK civil space activities across government.