Space Science in Context (17–18 October, 2024) is returning for its third year! SSiC is a FREE, cross-disciplinary conference on outer space and society – intended to bring together those across natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, and community work to tackle the big questions facing the community.
This year SSiC’s theme is Justice in Action.
Previous Space Science in Context conferences happened in 2020 and 2023, attracting over 800 people between then and highlighting 20+ speakers who talked about their social contexts of outer space. The content is still up on the SSiC website – so if you’d like to have a look at what was covered before, get in touch with the organisers through the SSiC website.
In this year’s programme, there are live sessions on the 17–18th October 2024. All speaker talks are pre-recorded and uploaded to the SSiC website one week before the event. This is because it’s so important for people to get a chance to think about the talks beyond the panel itself – it helps the audience and speakers reflect all of the conference content, bring thoughtful and rich questions, and dive deeply into cross-cutting issues during the live discussions. Some of the topics the panellists are covering this year include insights into making documentaries about aero/space workers; leading an organisation supporting Black researchers in space science; developing and running community groups advocating for Indigenous Sky rights; producing science fiction…and much more!
The three panels this year are:
The conference also includes a film screening, and two online social spaces for networking and sharing ideas. Registering for the (free) conference gets you access to all of these events!
One thing that is really important to the organisers, at Space Science in Context is a commitment to accessibility for the event. This means all of the pre-recorded speaker videos will have transcripts and closed captioning. There is English-language CART for the live event; you can see which sessions have CART on the Programme Schedule. The live event will be hosted on Zoom, but not be recorded.
Previous Page |03 December 2025
The UK Space Agency has today announced the recipients of the National Space Innovation Programme (NSIP). We extend our warmest congratulations to the academic and industry teams whose projects have been selected for support.
26 November 2025
Thank you to everyone who joined our November SPAN Town Hall. Below is a brief overview of the key updates shared across the community.
28 October 2025
We’re pleased to announce that our SPAN Whitepaper, Bridging the Gap Between Industry and Academia – led by Anushka Sharma and Professor Mark Sims (University of Leicester / SPAN), is now available to read. The paper sets out practical ways to deepen collaboration across the UK space ecosystem, including: Co-design from day zero with early academic […]
