The UK Space Agency has teamed up with university business incubator SETsquared to help create new innovations in space technology.

SETsquared is a partnership of the universities of Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Southampton and Surrey. It will help start-ups and small businesses turn innovations into commercial products and services.

Under the new agreement, the UK Space Agency will fund 40 businesses entering SETsquared’s entrepreneurship programme.

The programme helps start-ups hone their business plan and gain access to investment.

Businesses entering the scheme will be applying space technology for a range of applications, for example using data from satellites to improve communications, global positioning, navigation and timing.

”The space sector is a UK success story with aspirations to grow to a £40bn turnover by 2030,” said Colin Baldwin, UK space gateway programme manager at the UK Space Agency.

“To achieve this, we anticipate hundreds of new companies will start providing new products and services that rely upon satellites. We are delighted that SETsquared, with its proven track record, will be on-hand to help these companies grow and flourish.”

Simon Bond, Innovation Director at SETsquared, added: “We are seeing huge potential in some of the space-related research across the five universities.

“There are some ground-breaking technologies being developed that could become multi-million pound businesses. This partnership will effectively allow us to connect those ‘gems’ with the space sector and work together to nurture them.”

SETsquared’s incubation programme is among the most respected in Europe and has fostered successful start-up including iGeolise, which uses satellite data to power its Time Travel Platform.

The platform lets users search maps for information about local destinations based on how long it takes to get there, not how far away they are ‘as the crow flies’.

SETsquared provides mentoring, access to investors and corporate innovators and a wide range of industry experts through its network and training programmes