The space industry may be heading off to places millions of miles away from the Scotch Corner services, but that doesn't mean businesses and organisations from the North East can't potentially get involved in this exciting field. John Hill learns a bit more about the opportunities ahead of next month's Spacetech event in Durham.

NO MATTER what you told yourself when you were eight, the chances are few of you will ever go into space.

If you’re the sort of person who can herd up a few hundred thousand pound coins in reasonably quick time, you may one day be able to drag your aged frame on to a commercial space shuttle.

But for many of us, the closest we’ll get to staring into the seemingly infinite, twinkling expanse is that time when we pushed our palms against our eyelids to pass the time on the bus home.

However, it’s not such a stretch of the imagination to think you can play your own small part in mankind’s quest to observe or explore the stars. It might be that you are a relatively simple nut or bolt in the giant machine, or it may be an intriguing new technology. But a contract in the space industry isn’t necessarily just something that happens to other companies.

At least, that’s the message of Spacetech, an event organised by the County Durham Development Company in association with the Institute of Physics. Spacetech will take place at NETPark in Sedgefield on February 9 and will feature industry experts, representatives from international space agencies and companies involved in the sector.

CDDC has held conferences such as solar-energy-gathering Solar Flair in recent times. It arranged an event on the space industry back in 2009, and believes 2012 is a good time to make companies aware of increased interest in the sector.

“While we’ve been concentrating on energy recently, the space sector has been building a lot in our minds”, says Catherine Johns, CDDC’s director of innovation development. “You only have to look at a shuttle to see how many bits and pieces there are and how many people go into getting it up-and-running.

“There can be a perception that it’s all just hi-tech whizzy stuff. But there’s concrete and software and data-handling and welding in there too. There’s a large supply chain.”

There’s also a bit of a push to make Britain into a more active player. The Space Innovation and Growth Strategy published in 2010 said around 100,000 hi-tech jobs could be created if the UK increased its share of the global market in space products and services from 6% to 10% by 2030.

According to a report from the Oxford Economics consultancy, the UK space market grew by an average of 10% a year from 2007. The industry has a turnover of around £7.5bn, with encouraging growth.

Europe’s largest space, science and technology centre – The European Space Agency Centre – opened in Harwell in Oxford in 2009, and is home to 4,000 researchers. Also, the project office for the Square Kilometre Array initiative is based at Jodrell Bank Observatory near Manchester.

The line-up for Spacetech has been put together to allow experts to lay out what they’re after in the industry, and let companies in the sector share their stories.

For example, Dr Sheila Bailey of NASA is speaking just before lunch and the UK Space Agency’s assistant director Saleh Ahmed is on the bill.

The Technology Strategy Board’s head of special projects Michael Lawrence will be talking about space technology’s importance to the UK economy, while Tim Stevenson will outline the opportunities offered by the Square Kilometre Array telescope project; a £1.2bn initiative that aims to create the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope.

“Something like 90% of the jobs are in the South,” says Johns. “We think we’ve got extremely capable people here that can provide the same opportunities.

“I’ve had more speakers volunteer for this event than anything. I’ve had to turn people away. There’s a good range of Government speakers on there, but we’ve also got companies that are working in the sector such as Cryoconnect, TWI and Tekdata. It’s important companies see others that are already winning contracts and hear what they’ve done.”