Satellite Applications Catapult launches new Buckinghamshire test and development centre

The Satel­lite Appli­ca­tions Cat­a­pult yes­ter­day launched its new Drone Test and Devel­op­ment Cen­tre (DTDC) facil­i­ty at a for­mer RAF base with a 270m run­way, four ded­i­cat­ed land­ing pads, and mul­ti­ple fly­ing areas.

The DTDC offers per­ma­nent hangars as work­shop space and flex­i­ble work­bench options for oper­a­tors look­ing for short term leas­es and a place to test their equip­ment. Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices is the inau­gur­al cus­tomer and future plans include beyond visu­al line of sight (BVLOS) capa­bil­i­ties and pilot train­ing.

The launch event includ­ed a demon­stra­tion by SLiNK Tech and Cam­bridge Sen­sori­is of their auto­mat­ed take-off and land­ing sys­tems for drones and air-taxis.

Lucy Edge, COO and exec­u­tive direc­tor of Satel­lite Appli­ca­tions Cat­a­pult, said: “With a secure run­way on-site, clients can eas­i­ly oper­ate and fly their drones with­in a safe test­ing envi­ron­ment. Our first cus­tomer, Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices, is already work­ing from its flight oper­a­tions head­quar­ters at the site.”

SLiNK-TECH, a provider of auto­mat­ed take-off and land­ing sys­tems for drones and air-taxis and Cam­bridge Sen­sori­is, a sup­pli­er of drone radar sys­tems for auto­mat­ed land­ings, show­cased future pos­si­bil­i­ties with a state-of-the-art drone tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tion. Hangar 1 is cur­rent­ly occu­pied by Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices.

Michael Mer­ritt, strat­e­gy asso­ciate at Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices, added: “The Cen­tre has been an impor­tant hub for Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices since we first moved to the facil­i­ty in March 2022.

“We are huge­ly appre­cia­tive of the sup­port we have received from Cat­a­pult so far and look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing our work togeth­er to build a world-class drone ser­vices hub here.”

The devel­op­ment of the DTDC has been made pos­si­ble with sup­port from a key local part­ner, the Buck­ing­hamshire Local Enter­prise Part­ner­ship, who have invest­ed £1.4 mil­lion of LEP Get­ting Build­ing Funds.

Devel­op­ment man­ag­er Nigel MacKen­zie con­tin­ued: “We are thrilled to bring anoth­er her­itage area of the site back into use and extend the test capa­bil­i­ties. These new facil­i­ties will ben­e­fit exist­ing onsite occu­piers as well as attract­ing new oper­a­tors to the site.”

Matt Peachey, head of enter­prise zone devel­op­ment at Buck­ing­hamshire Local Enter­prise Part­ner­ship, said: “It’s great to see fur­ther inno­va­tion with­in the West­cott Space Clus­ter dri­ven by this new Drone Test and Devel­op­ment Cen­tre. We are proud to have pro­vid­ed Get­ting Build­ing Funds to help estab­lish this pio­neer­ing new facil­i­ty and see the poten­tial this offers to fur­ther devel­op the Buck­ing­hamshire Enter­prise Zone.”

In June 2022, Sky­ports select­ed West­cott Space Cluster’s south of Eng­land site as its Euro­pean head­quar­ters in part­ner­ship with the Satel­lite Appli­ca­tions Cat­a­pult to remote­ly oper­ate BVLOS drone flights.

Sky­ports selects West­cott Space Clus­ter as cen­tre of excel­lence for drone oper­a­tions