The UK Space Conference is an annual conference devoted to space held in the United Kingdom. The conference hosts the Sir Arthur Clarke Award prizegiving dinner.
The event also hosts the fly-off of the UKAYRoC student rocket competition
History
The UK Space Conference evolved out of the British Rocket Oral History Programme (BROHP) annual conference which had been running since 1998. The rebranding of the conference in 2007 signalled a broadening of its remit. The 2008 event included parallel sessions on Education, Research, Engineering and Astronomy as well as History.
Starting in 2011, the conference will be held at the University of Warwick in July. Until 2010, the conference was held at Charterhouse School in Surrey in March each year. Speakers included British planetary scientists Colin Pillinger (who was the principal investigator for the Beagle 2 probe) and Professor John Zarnecki who was instrumental in the success of the Huygens probe to Titan. Speakers also came from outside of the UK including former NASA astronaut and shuttle pilot Joe Engle and former Johnson Space Center Director George Abbey. The UK space commercial sector was represented with Virgin Galactic, Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd and EADS Astrium giving presentations, the latter also sponsoring the event.
Lembit Öpik MP attended the 2008 event, giving a plenary talk