The Inception of the UK Space Agency Accelerator
With the Explore applications soon coming to a close on the 25th of August, we look at the journey and history of the UK Space Agency and the inception of the accelerator programme.
The UK Space Agency has delivered a business support programme since 2015. It was in response to aims set out within the Space Growth Action Plan, an early iteration of the National Space Strategy, where it highlighted the need to grow space in the regions by providing a supportive business environment and to assist entrepreneurs by helping to grow and develop small companies. The Agency responded to this by engaging existing business support providers to specifically identify and support space startups and this resulted in the Space Incubator Network and the provision of around a dozen business incubation centres across the UK.
Building on the success of the Space Incubator Network, the UK Space Agency wanted to scale its ambitions for supporting early-stage businesses and consulted with a range of stakeholders to understand how we could add the most value to growing businesses. Following these consultations we decided to pilot an accelerator approach, and worked with external experts to develop and deliver the first programmes. We used what we learned from the pilot programmes from 2021 – 2022 and the UK Space Agency Accelerator was born.
The UK Space Agency Accelerator
The overall aim of the UK Space Agency Accelerator is to deliver a package of world class business support to early-stage space entrepreneurs. These aims are also, of course, aligned to the National Space Strategy and our Value Proposition; Catalysing Investment, Delivering Missions and Capabilities and Championing Space.
Catalysing investment is an easy one to explain, we aim to support early-stage businesses to succeed, develop sustainable business plans and ultimately contribute to the economic growth of their local areas and the nation as a whole. The innovations that our cohorts are developing will undoubtedly deliver the missions and capabilities of the future, and by supporting innovators at an early stage we aim to help them to understand commercialisation as well as technology development.
Another important aim of the UK Space Agency Accelerator is to make the space sector more accessible; this means reaching out to a more diverse range of people with space applicable technologies or ideas and helping them to see themselves as ‘space’ companies. We are particularly interested in engaging with more female founders and more people for more diverse cultural backgrounds.
If you match the criteria for the Explore Programme, then don’t miss out on your opportunity to grow the next phase of your entrepreneurial journey.