Future of the UK Space Sector: Ambition, Innovation and Opportunity

As the UK continues to solidify its role as a global space leader, this closing session will highlight the ambitions driving the sector forward. Industry visionaries will discuss the latest innovations, strategic opportunities, and the path to future growth. Discover what lies ahead for the UK space ecosystem and how businesses, innovators, and policymakers can work together to achieve a thriving, sustainable future in space.

Speaker Information

Craig Brown is Investment Director at the UK Space Agency, responsible for leading the Agency’s work to catalyse investment in the UK space sector. 

Craig was Innovation Lead for Space at Innovate UK from 2014 – 2019, and then spent three and a half years in industry, working for SatixFy, which he helped grow significantly from an SME to a public company.

Prior to joining Innovate UK, Craig spent 6 years at Airbus Defence and Space working on a range of programmes in both the science missions and downstream applications parts of the business. 

In 2010, Craig was awarded his PhD from the University of Leicester where he worked on the BepiColombo MIXS instrument, following a couple of years working at the European Space Agency in the Future Programmes group. 

He has remained active in the UK space community, leading the equality, diversity and inclusion work for the Space Skills Advisory Panel as well as helping coordinate the programme for the UK Space Conference. 

Dr Sarah Casewell is an astrophysicist and Lecturer at the University of Leicester where she is co-lead of the Centre for Exoplanet Research.  Sarah is an observational astronomer who has worked with data from missions such as JWST, the Hubble Space Telescope and many ground based telescopes as well as chairing time allocation panels for them. She is currently a European Space Agency community scientist for the upcoming Ariel exoplanet mission and is part of the PLATO and Euclid consortia.  

Sarah has been co-Chair of the Women’s Staff Equality Forum at the University of Leicester, where she was highlighted as one of the University’s inspirational women, and spoke at the “women leading with purpose” leadership course about her journey as a woman within Science and the Space sector. She was recently featured in the Institute of Physics  exhibition “Mimi’s adventure in Space”, and appears regularly on the radio speaking about astrophysical phenomena. 

Colin Baldwin, Executive Director, UKspace

Colin commenced his role as Executive Director of UKspace – the industry-led trade association for the UK’s space sector – in July 2024, having joined as Head of Policy in June 2022.  

Prior to this Colin was Head of Local Growth Strategy at the UK Space Agency, with responsibility for developing space clusters across the country, fostering university-business collaborations and developing initiatives to support space start-ups and scale-ups. Whilst at the UK Space Agency, he also co-led work to understand and mitigate the impacts of Covid on the space sector and led the UK Space Agency’s Interim Strategy Team - working across Government to support the establishment of the new National Space Council and initiate work on the National Space Strategy. 

Earlier in his career, Colin was involved in establishing the International Space Innovation Centre and Satellite Applications Catapult.