Academic Partnership and Knowledge Exchange

We support the development of academic research, and its routes to the market, by strengthening partnerships and boosting the commercialisation of your ideas. We have strong relationships with many research organisations across the UK, and actively collaborate on research and innovation projects.

We can help you to identify and make use of the world-leading research and innovation happening all across the UK in Research Organisations. We can also support you in capitalising on, and commercialising, cutting-edge technologies and solutions.

We aim to engage and collaborate with researchers and innovators, whether they focus on a specific sector or not. By encouraging non-sectoral researchers and innovators to apply their knowledge to space-derived challenges, we can bring new ideas and collectively help to innovate and grow the UK’s space sector for a better world.

Examples of opportunities to engage and collaborate with the Satellite Applications Catapult include:

• Collaborative research and co-development of projects
• Horizon scanning for future priority technology areas
• Regular meetups and co-organised events
• Support with innovation and scale-up programmes
• Webinar series
• Workshops, hackathons and sandpits
• Residencies for researchers via the RiR scheme

Activities such as these enable wider impact of research and innovation, Knowledge Exchange (KE), and will ultimately enhance the growth of the UKs already flourishing space ecosystem.

Access to testing facilities can be difficult, expensive, limited, and often out of reach for long-term projects.

That’s why we’ve launched our Facilities for Academia Fund. This fund gives UK-based academics (PhD level and above) the chance to access our cutting-edge facilities, from advanced testing ranges to specialist labs.

By opening our doors to the academic community, we’re helping researchers accelerate discovery, strengthen collaborations, and drive the next wave of innovation in the UK space sector.