A not-for-profit UK innovation centre at the Harwell Campus that helps businesses and researchers use satellite technology, from Earth observation to navigation and communications.
The Satellite Applications Catapult is an independent, not-for-profit innovation and technology company at Harwell, Oxfordshire. Its job is to help companies of every size, universities and public bodies use satellite data and technology to solve real problems. It brings people from different fields together so a farming company, a health technology business or a local council can work with space experts. It is one of the Catapult centres, a network of national technology centres, and its site describes it as accelerating innovation in space applications for real-world impact.
It was launched in December 2012 and formally set up in March 2013 as one of the first Catapults created after the 2010 Hauser Report. Stuart Martin was its founding chief executive from January 2013 and announced in February 2023 that he would step down. The Catapult says it has run over 140 collaborative projects involving almost 100 companies, about half of them small and medium-sized and a third from outside the space industry. More than 25 universities have been involved.
Its stated mission is to "innovate for a better world, empowered by space". Early projects included GEMNet, which with Ordnance Survey measures interference to satellite navigation signals, a system for spotting illegal fishing with satellite data with the Pew Charitable Trusts, and a service for Milton Keynes Council that used satellite imagery to check building progress. Several of these examples come from a 2015 interview, so they are dated.
The Catapult is based at the Harwell Campus, in the middle of the UK's largest space cluster, along with RAL Space, the European Space Agency and the UK Space Agency. It has facilities including a satellite communications lab, a cloud processing service and a far-field antenna test range, and offers programmes such as Space Enterprise Labs around the country. Its pages emphasise open innovation, meaning that ideas are developed with partners rather than behind closed doors. We did not find a staff number or culture statement.
The people who work in a Catapult are a blend of technical specialists and people who build partnerships. There are engineers and data scientists, Earth observation and navigation experts, project managers, business development staff and communications specialists. Because projects cross industries, there is often a chance to learn about sectors such as farming, transport and the environment as well as space. Check the Catapult website for the roles it advertises.
Website: sa.catapult.org.uk
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