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

Sky­ports has select­ed West­cott Space Cluster’s south of Eng­land site as its Euro­pean head­quar­ters in part­ner­ship with the Satel­lite Appli­ca­tions Cat­a­pult to remote­ly oper­ate its Beyond Visu­al Line Sight (BVLOS) drone flights.

Sky­ports will devel­op the loca­tion as its glob­al com­mand and con­trol cen­tre for deliv­ery, sur­vey and sur­veil­lance drone mis­sions, employ­ing the site’s mul­ti-redun­dant inter­net net­work­ing capa­bil­i­ties to enable remote flight oper­a­tions any­where in the world, and will devel­op the site for pilots.

The West­cott site is dis­tin­guished as a leader in inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment and ser­vices, expand­ing across mul­ti­ple sec­tors, includ­ing space, health­care, agri­cul­ture, engi­neer­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing.

Sky­ports oper­ates drone ser­vices for var­i­ous indus­tries, includ­ing ship-to-shore deliv­er­ies, BVLOS drone sur­vey­ing and sur­veil­lance, and med­ical drone logis­tics. Its autonomous BVLOS capa­bil­i­ties sig­nif­i­cant­ly cut oper­a­tional lead times and over­heads, pro­vid­ing a cheap­er, faster and more reli­able ser­vice for hard-to-reach areas and crit­i­cal ser­vices.

West­cott Area Man­ag­er at Satel­lite Appli­ca­tions Cat­a­pult Mar­tin Smye-Rums­by said: “It is fit­ting that the West­cott Inno­va­tion Cen­tre is where Sky­ports will con­tin­ue to devel­op its pio­neer­ing oper­a­tions by using space data and tech­nol­o­gy to improve life for us all.

“Sky­ports has pre­vi­ous­ly worked on a fan­tas­tic health­care ini­tia­tive with the Euro­pean Space Agency (ESA) and Argyll & Bute Health and Social Care Part­ner­ship (HSCP) to sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve logis­tics when deliv­er­ing med­ical ser­vices in the region.”

Sky­ports head of drone ser­vices Alex Brown added: “Our move to West­cott Space Clus­ter and work with Satel­lite Appli­ca­tions Cat­a­pult is tes­ta­ment to the fact that drone ser­vices have become a core solu­tion for enhanc­ing crit­i­cal ser­vices with more sus­tain­able, cost-effec­tive alter­na­tives.

“We look for­ward to mov­ing our oper­a­tional head­quar­ters to an envi­ron­ment that will fos­ter inno­va­tion and research and enable us to demon­strate and extend our capa­bil­i­ties.”

In Feb­ru­ary last year, Argyll and Bute HSCP began work­ing with Sky­ports to use drones to trans­port COVID-19 test sam­ples and oth­er med­ical sup­plies between remote loca­tions in the west of Scot­land.

The project was fund­ed by a joint ini­tia­tive between the UK Space Agency (UKSA) and Euro­pean Space Agency (ESA) to sup­port the NHS with deliv­ery drones that car­ry up to 3kg of crit­i­cal med­ical sup­plies up to 40 miles.

In June 2020, Flock sup­port­ed Sky­ports dur­ing a two-week tri­al to trans­port urgent med­ical car­go to remote com­mu­ni­ties in Scot­land, backed by Argyll and Bute HSCP by insur­ing drones man­u­fac­tured by Wing­copter with the goal to cut deliv­ery times from six hours one-way via fer­ry, to just 15 min­utes on-demand by drone.