Airbus selects UK National Satellite Test Facility at Harwell for SKYNET 6A testing

By Peter Davison

16 May 2023

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The Business Magazine article image for: Airbus selects UK National Satellite Test Facility at Harwell for SKYNET 6A testing

Ian Annett, Deputy CEO UK Space Agency, Matt Fletcher Head of Environmental Test at STFC RAL Space, and Richard Budd, Head of Secure Communications UK, US & Australia, Airbus Defence and Space, at the signing ceremony for SKYNET 6A testing - copyright - STFC RAL Space

Aerospace giant Airbus has selected the National Satellite Test Facility (NSTF) at Harwell in Oxfordshire to carry out the comprehensive test campaign on the UK Ministry of Defence’s next generation secure communications satellite SKYNET 6A.

The £116 million government-funded NSTF, operated by experts from the Science and Technology Facilities Council's RAL Space will carry out the SKYNET 6A test campaign, including electromagnetic compatibility, as well as acoustic and thermal vacuum testing, to replicate the harsh conditions of space.

Richard Franklin, managing director of Airbus Defence and Space UK, said: “SKYNET 6A is designed and manufactured at our Stevenage and Portsmouth sites and will undergo its entire testing campaign at the new National Satellite Test Facility.

"It is fitting that the facility’s first testing contract is for Britain’s’ next generation SKYNET 6A, which will provide critical, secure-communications capability for our armed forces and will help further extend the UK’s space ecosystem and capability.”

Ian Annett, Deputy CEO at the UK Space Agency, said: “The National Satellite Test Facility is a significant addition to the UK’s growing space infrastructure that will improve the support available for companies across the breadth of the UK space industry, which employ thousands of people across the country.

"The brand new facility, the first customer of which will be Airbus Defence and Space, will also help attract new businesses of all shapes and sizes to Harwell and the UK. This will catalyse investment and accelerate the development of new technologies for decades to come – from advanced satellite manufacturing to secure communications, navigation and Earth observation.”

SKYNET 6A will be the first SKYNET milsatcom satellite to be entirely designed, built and tested in the UK. The programme involves a 500-strong team at Airbus and is being supported by more than 45 SMEs across the UK. This geostationary telecommunications satellite will provide secure communications services for the UK’s armed forces around the world following its launch in 2025.

By Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country.

An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts.

Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.