Thank you for your interest in becoming a Non-Executive Director of the Satellite Applications Catapult. I am delighted that you are considering applying to join our fantastic team at such an exciting time for us.
The Satellite Applications Catapult was founded in 2013 by Innovate UK to drive economic growth in the space sector. We work with the community to understand their needs and focus down hard on three areas:
- We support businesses in the sector directly with access to facilities, technical experts and help with starting, commercialising and scaling up a business.
- We play key roles in collaborative and commercial R&D projects, often taking technology risks which other companies were not able or willing to do.
- We bring the market towards the space sector, identifying areas where satellites can make a real difference to stimulate market demand.
The sector today enjoys very high-growth and is a real powerhouse for high-value jobs in the UK. UK space-related organisations produce £18.9bn in income, contribute £16.9bn GVA and the industry employs approximately 52,000 people. The global space industry is also growing at more than 11% per year.
With rapid growth comes incredible opportunities for our business and the businesses we work with. To support these opportunity areas in 2023 we transitioned to become a Mission-Led organisation. Our Missions represent areas of growth for the UK space sector and wider UK economy, areas where we have existing UK expertise and strong academic and commercial capability, and where the Catapult can play a clear role in solving the most immediate or pressing challenges. Our missions are Beyond Earth, Connected and Autonomous Earth and Sustainable Earth. Today, they lead the direction of our business.
You will be joining at a time of great opportunity. Space is still the next great frontier. We will continue to open everyone’s eyes to the power of space, break down barriers and accelerate the adoption of space-based solutions to address some of the world’s biggest challenges. With the global space market now predicted to be worth $1Trn by 2040, the size of the prize is bigger than it was when we were founded in 2013.
You don’t have to be a space fanatic to work with us. But, if you have got this far, we suspect that you share our passion and the ideals behind our mission to innovate for a better world, empowered by space, and we look forward to talking to you.
Best wishes,
Sanjay Bhandari MBE
Chair