Rather than being a full space agency as maintained by some other countries, BNSC HQ comprised about thirty civil servants on rotation from the partners. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills was the 'host' department and provided the central policy staff including the Director General. The last DG, Dr. David Williams, was the first to have been externally appointed. Much of Britain's yearly civil space budget of £268 million was contributed by the Department of Trade and Industry or controlled by the partnership rather than the BNSC, and about three-quarters of that budget flows directly to the European Space Agency. BNSC staff represented the UK at the various programme boards of ESA and also its governing Council. In 2004, the budget for BNSC headquarters was approximately £500,000. From January 2009, the BNSC was headquartered in Swindon, Wiltshire, in the same building as the Science and Technology Facilities Council and the Technology Strategy Board. BNSC was directed by the Minister for Science and Innovation, Paul Drayson.
Projects funded through BNSC
ESA
The BNSC was the third largest financial contributor to the General Budget of the European Space Agency, contributing 17.4%, to its Science Programme and to its robotic exploration initiative the Aurora programme. Investments were also made in the ESA telecommunications programme 'ARTES' in order to develop payload technology used, for example, in the satellites of Inmarsat, the UK based mobile satellite operator. The BNSC partnership co-funded a private sector project led by Avanti Communications to build a satellite called HYLAS to provide broadband communications to rural and remote users. Current projects in the field of space science include LISA Pathfinder, for which UK industry is the prime contractor and UK universities are building major payload elements; the astrometry Gaia mission, for which UK industry is supplying the detectors, avionics, software and data processing electronics; and the James Webb Space Telescope, for which a UK consortium led by the UK Astronomy Technology Centre is building the European part of the Mid Infra Red Instrument . The UK has contributed the SPIRE instrument for the Herschel Space Observatory and detector and cooling system technology for the Planckcosmic microwave background mission. In the field of Earth observation, projects include the ESA ADM-Aeolus wind profiling mission, for which UK industry is the prime contractor and CryoSat-2 which is directed by UK scientist Professor Duncan Wingham of University College London. Recent BNSC activities include the Mosaic small satellite programme, which led to the launch of the TopSathigh resolution EO mission and also the Disaster Monitoring Constellation.
