BAE Systems Digital Intelligence has established a new, integrated, Space Leadership Team and business unit.
(Not pictured – Tony Holt, Sarah Parker and Markos Trichas)
Headed up by our newly appointed Director of Space, Doug Liddle, the team will bring together experienced senior leaders from across BAE Systems Digital Intelligence and In-Space Missions to advance our space strategy and deliver innovation in space for advantage on Earth.
Space technology helps us achieve incredible things. Scientists are making ground-breaking discoveries about the universe at a rapid pace – illustrated recently when the European Space Agency found water frost on Mars’ huge volcanoes. Back on Earth, space capability is becoming a core requirement for our customers across government, defence and commercial sectors in order to protect citizens, defend nations, predict natural disasters and more.
However, the importance of space to society is by no means new. For a long time now, technologies such as satellites have been interwoven everyone’s daily lives – take GPS in phones as just one example. At BAE Systems, the company has a long heritage of working in the sector. Over the past 20 years, the firm has delivered complex defence programs to help create a secure space domain, developing specialist technologies in waveforms, electronics, antennas and digital signal processing analytics.
Today, BAE Systems is committed to further investing in space capabilities. In 2021, when BAE Systems acquired In-Space Missions – the company Liddle co-founded back in 2015 – the aim was to bring together this existing space expertise with In-Space Missions’ capabilities, enabling us to work together to design, build and operate full satellites.
In-Space Missions has been a part of BAE Systems Digital Intelligence since the company’s formation in 2022, and two talented teams have collaborated closely on Azalea – this program will launch a cluster of multi-sensor satellites into LEO, with the ability to deliver high-quality information and intelligence to Earth in real time.
A key part of our focus will be to continue driving our Azalea programme at a pivotal stage of its delivery. As Earth Observation (EO) data becomes central to providing our customers with a digital advantage, Azalea will enable us to deliver space-derived intelligence securely, anywhere in the world.
Azalea’s capabilities recognise the growing importance of space to defence, aligning with the UK Government’s Defence Space Strategy which underlines the integral role of the space domain in achieving multi-domain integration. And while our top priority is supporting UK defence with sovereign space capability, the cluster will also be dual use, meaning it can be leveraged for wider EO use cases such as environmental monitoring.
The company plans to expand on radio frequency data collection and mapping capability in the near future to provide customers with an even greater level of intelligence.
The firm will also work to advance wider space capabilities. Examples include:
- Faraday Dragon: Our Asia-Pacific regional satellite rideshare mission, which involves building a satellite with the ability to carry multiple payloads for organisations in the region. This means that several agencies or businesses can carry their technology on one spacecraft to achieve different goals in areas like agriculture, maritime and connectivity.
- Tracking, Telemetry and Command Processor (TTCP): The next generation technology for ground station signal processing, TTCP allows the European Space Agency to track, communicate and control the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, known as ‘Juice’, on its eight year journey from Earth to Callisto, Europa and Ganymede.
- Software defined payloads: Satellites that can be upgraded while in orbit for an enhanced lifespan and greater mission flexibility.
- Ground station expertise: Currently being installed at the Great Baddow office, we have the ability to send and receive data to our satellites on-orbit.