Establishment of the UK Space Biomedicine Consortium

During the course of the summer representatives from a number of UK organisations interested in or currently participating in space biomedicine activities met with the aim of discussing collaboration. An agreement was signed on the 1st June at King’s College London which stated that a UK Space Biomedicine Consortium had been established to examine mechanisms for collaboration and whether and if so, how a national space biomedicine strategy could be pursued.

The UK Space Biomedicine Association has been providing secretarial support to the process throughout and has initiated a survey of organisations involved in space biomedicine research and/or education activities to enable the UK Space Agency and Research Councils to better understand the size and nature of the community.

A follow-on meeting in August at University College London lead to the Consortium agreeing to examine the benefits in relation to costs of the UK subscribing to the European Space Agency’s ELIPS programme (European programme for Life and Physical Sciences) and to establish an appropriate means by which the Consortium could interact, collaborate and develop a draft national space biomedicine strategy.