Last week’s poll: the UK in space

The Union flag might not appear prominently on many space missions, but British expertise plays a major role in space, with a large number of commercial communications satellites, payloads for Earth observation, planetary science and deep space discovery spacecraft and propulsion systems all being made by British experts and at UK facilities.

With this in mind, we asked our readers their thoughts about the UK in space. We received 462 responses, of which half believe that the UK public does not know or appreciate enough about the British contribution to space science. Almost a third, however, thought that the UK’s contribution outweighed what could be expected of a country and economy of this size, with 29 per cent stating that the country should and does punch above its weight in space. A further 12 per cent said that space was just one industry among many and does not deserve special consideration, while nine per cent declined to pick an option.