By Jeremy Lovell
LONDON, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Britain will focus on developing inner space projects such as satellites for television and navigation in the immediate future but will not abandon deep space, science minister Lord Sainsbury said on Wednesday.
"It is the uses of space that are becoming increasingly economically important," he told reporters unveiling a draft three-year space strategy in which the main aim is to exploit space to improve the quality of people's lives.
"This is all about how we use space now on the ground. Space produces substantial benefits to society," he added, citing television, telecommunications, personal navigation and detailed monitoring of the environment among a host of key areas.
"Global Positioning Systems (GPS) are going to be a huge market in the future," he said. "All cars will have on-board navigation systems and people will be able to find their way round towns or the countryside on their mobile phones."
Satellites were also vital in monitoring the environment in the hunt for pollution, shifting weather patterns and physical changes on the ground, he added.
Sainsbury said the British space industry -- both hardware and services -- earned 2.9 billion pounds in 2000/01, up 17 percent from the previous year.
All the growth came in the services sector which was up 20 percent to 2.5 billion pounds and is seen rising strongly.
The British experience reflected the global growth already experienced and forecast in the satellite services sector which is estimated to be worth a total of $60.5 billion in 2007 against $27.5 billion in 2001.
But Sainsbury stressed that the focus on inner space would not detract from Britain's involvement in deep space scientific missions such as Beagle 2 which blasts off from Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan in June on a mission to Mars.
"Beagle 2 will be hugely inspiring and exciting to everybody," Sainsbury said of the probe which will parachute onto the surface of the red planet looking for signs of life.
Britain would also continue to support the Rosetta comet probe whose launch has been put back a year because of doubts about the European Space Agency's Ariane-5 rocket.
It was involved in a number of other projects but had no intention of joining the international space station except for selected scientific experiments and did not believe it was necessary to indulge in manned deep space missions.
"The really exciting thing is exploring the universe, and you don't need manned flights for that," Sainsbury said.