The Beagle probe crashed and burned, but Britain’s space business is thriving.

Britain has launched its own space agency. The announcement was made this afternoon by Paul Drayson, the UK’s science minister, during a speech at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in Oxfordshire.

The UK is perhaps best known for its failed Beagle lander, which ploughed into the surface of Mars in 2003. But the Beagle aside, Britain has one of the more successful space industries in Europe. According to the press release that accompanied the announcement, the UK’s satellite sector has grown by 9% a year since 1999/00. The government says that the industry currently contributes £6.5 billion a year to the UK economy and supports some 68,000 jobs (though it’s unclear what “supports” means in this case). This summer, the European Space Agency also opened a centre at RAL to focus on earth-observation and robotic exploration.

The new agency’s jobs will include strengthening the UK’s relationship with ESA, maximizing industry benefits from space technology, and working with the scientific community to provide a vision for the sector. That makes it sound a lot like the British National Space Centre, which just released its own review of the nation’s space plans. That review laid out several options for the UK’s involvement in space, including robotic moon missions and human exploration.

It’s not yet clear whether the new agency will have real teeth or simply become a hyped-up space centre. Most of the UK’s space activities, including its participation in ESA, are currently run by the Science and Technologies Facilities Council (STFC). Whether the new agency will gain control of the ESA-portion of STFC could make a big difference in how effective it actually is…

Image: Beagle 2