Innovate
Experts in Space Domain Awareness, safeguarding our national and allied critical space assets.
SPACE-BASED SOLAR POWER AS A CONTRIBUTOR TO NET ZERO
A TECHNO-ECONOMIC FEASIBILITY ASSESSMENT
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) commissioned Frazer-Nash to study the engineering feasibility, costs and economic benefits of space-based solar power (SBSP), as a possible future energy technology which could help to de-risk the UK’s pathway to net zero.
- A key aspect of the study was to understand the benefits to society from pursing a development programme that would yield a competitive cost of energy, and wider economic benefits from a UK-based operational SBSP system.
- In partnership with Oxford Economics we developed a bespoke economic impact model that estimated the value of a SBSP system. We used national input-output tables to define the flow of economic value through the supply chain to derive impact multipliers.
- Using these multipliers we assessed the return on investment to the UK economy from supporting a development programme. We used our model to advise the Government on the appropriate level of public funding that would be needed to establish an economically viable SBSP system.
The skills and expertise we provided and developed during this project are directly relevant to the socio-economic impact study of the GDF programme.
- Like GDF, SBSP is a first of a kind, which requires novel thinking and an ability to deal with a great degree of programmatic uncertainty. To address these challenges, we capitalised on our in-house modelling expertise to create probabilistic estimates of a technically viable SBSP. Then, we used this data to determine the economic benefits that might result from a successful SBSP programme.
- We were able to draw on our engineering pedigree, coupled with our cutting-edge economic advisory services to provide the necessary insight to model economic impact. We made connections between the engineering requirements of SBSP and the construct of the UK economy. This enabled us to use national datasets to estimate and forecast economic impacts.
- We propose a similar approach to estimate the contribution of GDF to each local community site. Importantly, we bring both the engineering understanding of a GDF and the ability to determine economic impact inhouse by using the expertise of Michael Hall and Sam White, who have demonstrable recent experience of performing such tasks, and who will lead a wider team of economists, statisticians and social researchers to successfully deliver this study.
PROJECT "IRON STALLION" - SPACE TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT
Iron Stallion is a fully automated system which allows for Space Traffic Management and Protect and Defend operations. Iron Stallion utilises astrodynamics and data algorithms to show the Pattern of Life of satellites specified by the analyst. Real-time data from multiple sources is constantly refined and updated, and passed through the incorporated algorithms, to allow for complete space domain awareness.
The team provide operational support to the military through predictive threat assessment, establishing what satellites are close by to the satellites we care about such as the Skynet Constellation. We can provide updates on launches of satellites into orbit, provide assessment on any manoeuvres that may occur from different satellites, and so much more. The team provide updates daily to the JCO UK and monitor the communication channels to ensure they are providing real-time updates to Space Command.
DATA ENGINEERING - DESIGN FOR DEMISE CASE STUDY
Situation:
- The increasing number of satellites poses a risk to safe future space operations so by international agreement satellites must deorbit within 25 years of the end of their operational lifetime and must have a demonstrable ground casualty risk probability lower than 1 in 10,000. This can be achieved by costly controlled re-entry or by design for demise (D4D) such that the satellite is designed to passively demise on re-entry.
Task:
- Frazer-Nash were tasked with investigating the current state-of-the-art tools for demise calculations, eliciting the user requirements for a new tool, and de-risking the understanding of the algorithms and design process, and proposing the architectural design for the next generation of design-for-demise tools to lead to a step change in safer satellite design.
Action:
- We have leveraged our multi-disciplinary systems engineering skills and consortium partners, engaged with the user community, academia, and industry to understand the requirements, the current tools, the range of physics and algorithms that would need to be improved to allow faster, more accurate, and more usable tools.
Result:
- We have shown where there are current weaknesses in the existing methods that lead to an over-predictions of the demisability of tools and shown how these can be improved and incorporated into a modern, fast, highly scalable user interface using Monte-Carlo methods to iterate and optimise to improve the designs of future satellites.
