Space Weather

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Data Protection and Telecoms (Chris Bryant)]

It is a delight to see you in your place, Mr Turner, and to take part in this debate.

Given the weather we have been having, it is somewhat ironic that we are worrying about space weather. People sometimes think the sun is a wonderful thing and a delight when it comes out in the UK. It also helps ice cream sales, with the best ice cream in Britain coming from Subzero, made in the Rhondda—I note no contest on that. But having suffered from stage 4 melanoma, I am also conscious that the sun can cause enormous damage through normal exposure. One of the fastest growing forms of cancer in the UK is skin cancer, as a direct result of people being over-exposed to the sun. My advice is that people should avoid the sun between 10 o’clock and 3 o’clock and, if they are out in the sun, that they should cover up or use high-quality sunscreen.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Solihull West and Shirley (Dr Shastri-Hurst) for securing the debate, which relates to an important part of the resilience we need in this country. Of course, it is something we need to do not on our own but with our allies. As he said, we are intimately involved with the European Space Agency, and we will address some of these issues with allies in other countries.

The hon. Member is right to highlight the importance of space weather. He referred to the 1989 Quebec incident, and there are many others, although some have not been quite as severe. He did not mention what happened in May 2024 when, to the great delight of many people, the aurora borealis was visible all the way down to Kent, which antagonised my husband, who has on many occasions gone to Norway, Iceland and all sorts of other places, where he has sat in car parks to try to watch it without ever seeing it. At the same time, 5,000 Starlink satellites had to perform autocorrection manoeuvres to make sure they were safe. The system survived, but it shows that severe space weather can have a profound effect on our satellites.

The Royal Academy of Engineering has reported on some of the potential impacts if we were to have a repeat of the Carrington event. We might be talking about the grid carrying 13 times its normal voltage, which would damage transformers. Two coastal nodes could experience disconnection. Blackouts of a few hours could occur in major urban areas across the United Kingdom. As for our satellites, 10% of the operational fleet could experience temporary outages lasting hours to days, and all satellites would experience rapid ageing due to damage to their solar arrays. There would be an effect on space-based PNT—positioning, navigation and timing—and a loss of lower-frequency Satcom and HF radio communications for between one and three days.

People often think that space does not really matter to how we live our lives, but I would defy anybody in this country to live a whole day without engaging with something that is affected by satellites or by space, whether it is going shopping, navigating by car or on foot—exiting a tube station and knowing whether to go left or right—using the internet or knowing that the supermarket is ordering the right things. So many aspects of our lives are determined by such things, including forecasting the weather so we know whether to take an umbrella to Wimbledon. All those things are affected by space, which is why it is all the more important that we take it extremely seriously.

The UK is a world leader in forecasting space weather. The Met Office space weather operations centre in Exeter, which my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) mentioned, makes a high-quality contribution not just to our own country but to other countries across the world. The Met Office is currently evaluating a five-year £20 million research programme sponsored by UK Research and Innovation.

The hon. Member for Solihull West and Shirley was right to mention monitoring and observation of the sun, which is essential to understanding and predicting space weather. That is why we are the leading funder of the European Space Agency’s Vigil mission, which he referred to. This will be Europe’s first dedicated space weather mission, it will provide data and imagery 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and it is expected to launch in 2031. Vigil will work in tandem with United States spacecraft to improve the provision of solar observations. These will provide critical data, enabling forecasters to predict when solar eruptions will impact the Earth. The mission demonstrates that the UK and Europe are committed to space weather monitoring, and it holds equal importance for the US, the UK and European partners. That combination is important for all of us.

The hon. Member for Solihull West and Shirley was also right to mention the issues that apply to the Ministry of Defence, as this is not just about space weather; it is about potential damage to satellite constellations. It is a simple fact that if we wanted to dominate a terrain or a domain on the Earth in a conflict situation, we would want to dominate the satellites in space as well. That is why, if there were to be any kind of major conflict, it would almost certainly start in space before it started on Earth. That is why it is so important that the UK has a joint operation between the civil side, through the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and the military side, through the Ministry of Defence, to track everything that is happening in the several layers of space so that we know the potential dangers.

Some of those dangers might be a result of space weather, but they might also be a result of the amount of debris up there. I am glad to say that the UK has some of the leading companies in developing space debris removal to make space sustainable. A chunk of a satellite inadvertently crashing into another is problematic, and a hostile state actor taking out UK satellites, or satellites on which we rely, would be equally significant. That is why I am proud that, for the last year, we have had a joint team working in High Wycombe—which I visited a couple of weeks ago with the Minister for Defence Procurement and Industry, my right hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Garston (Maria Eagle)—to make sure that everything in space on which we rely here on Earth is secure.

The hon. Member for Solihull West and Shirley is right that we must not lag behind, but I would argue that we are ahead. We know there are potential hostile actors. The obvious two that have been mentioned in previous public debates are Russia and China. He is absolutely right, so we need to make sure we are at the forefront of securing our defence operations.

The previous Government published the UK’s first severe space weather preparedness strategy in 2015. The current strategy was published in 2021 and supports the aims of the national space strategy. It ensures that severe space weather is appropriately managed, enabling the UK to pursue its wider ambitions in space, and sets out a five-year road map to improve the UK’s preparedness for a severe space weather event. Anybody who can add up will have noticed that five years after 2021 is 2026. I am confident that, now DSIT and the MOD have their spending review settlements, we will publish a full space strategy and lay it before the House. Part of that will undoubtedly respond to some of the issues raised by the hon. Member for Solihull West and Shirley today.

The hon. Gentleman asked me six questions, but he asked them so quickly that the first point in my notes is just “a plan”—I was not writing fast enough. I am absolutely certain that we will produce a plan, because we will produce a plan for the whole sector, and this issue will undoubtedly be part of it. Secondly, he asked whether we will introduce statutory requirements. We will obviously have to keep that under review to see whether it is necessary, and it is part of what we would include in a plan. If we were to do that, we would have to consult, which takes time.

The hon. Gentleman also asked about armed forces preparedness, which I assure him we take very seriously. One of our recent innovations is to gather all the Ministers with responsibility for space-related issues in different Departments—the MOD, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Department for Transport, the Foreign Office, other parts of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero—because we need to make sure that we act as a whole Government in this area. The next meeting is next Monday. I am very hopeful that we can spot areas where we can secure efficiencies because we are working as a whole Government. We can also make sure that none of the issues that the hon. Gentleman raised are forgotten.

I think the hon. Gentleman’s fourth question was about broadcasting. In my mind, we have Mr Schafernaker giving us a televised weekly update on space weather. My message to the broadcasters is that it would be good if they gave people in the UK a better understanding of the significance of space and the space sector—not just that it is an industrial powerhouse, which we are good at, but of our engagement and involvement in space and how important it is to us. We also need more people in the UK to think of it as a potential career, so perhaps Mr Schafernaker should produce a regular space weather broadcast. I cannot remember whether the hon. Member asked five or six questions, but I wrote down five, the fifth of which concerned whether the Cabinet Office should require local authorities and others to have measures in place to deal with potential space weather threats.

Some of these issues are for DESNZ. We must ensure the security and resilience of our energy and telecoms, as without a functioning power grid, mobile and other telecoms operations are unlikely to function, and they are absolutely essential to public services, particularly the emergency services. We must weave all of that into our resilience measures, which is why this issue has been on the national risk register since 2012.

If I have got any of the hon. Gentleman’s questions wrong, I am happy to write to him. I thank him for the debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale on having a tame astrophysicist. I am not sure whether we have any in the Department, but I am sure we can have access to her tame astrophysicist when necessary.

Question put and agreed to.