UKSA is providing over #1m to seven firms to help progress novel sensor technology and the smart algorithms necessary to interpret their data.
Finding better ways to surveil things moving overhead has become a high priority issue.
With more and more satellites being found, there is growing concern about the potential for crashes.
A big concern is that the burgeoning population of redundant hardware and crap in orbit - a few 900,000 objects bigger than 1cm by some counts, and it all capable of doing immense damage to, or even ruining, an operational spacecraft in a high-velocity experience.
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The jobs being supported by UKSA come in a mixture of start-ups and more established businesses.
The overriding objective is to improve ways to spot, characterise and monitor objects.
Finally, this is data which could be fed into the automatic traffic management methods of the future that will keep working satellites out of harm's way.
The funded projects include:
Lift Me Off: To create machine-learning and artificial intelligence techniques to distinguish between satellites and space junk.
Fujitsu: To also develop machine-learning approaches and quantum-inspired processing to increase mission planning to eliminate debris.
Deimos and Northern Space and Security: To develop a new Selection of optical sensors to monitor space objects in the United Kingdom.
Andor: To enhance the sensitivity and speed of its own camera detector technology to map and monitor smaller sized debris objects.
D-Orbit UK: To refine using newly established sensors to capture pictures of both, and characterise, objects moving around a spacecraft.
Lumi Space: The company is creating laser ranging technology to spot, characterise and just track items in orbit.
"We've known for a long time that the space environment is getting harder, more littered," explained Jacob Geer from UKSA. "Space surveillance and tracking is one of the key things we can do to keep safe those satellites we rely on today, and to make sure certain orbits don't become inaccessible for future generations since there's too much debris in them.
"We had 26 proposals come to us and that I think we've chosen a good cross-section of thoughts in the seven companies we're supporting," he told BBC News.
While lots of these jobs are still in the lab stage, D-Orbit's work is dedicated to pushing the capacity of some of its hardware currently in space.
The company recently launched a vehicle to carry and deploy a clutch of small satellites. This car uses cameras to photograph its environment and to map the celebrities for the purposes of navigation.
D-Orbit has the idea of utilizing the cameras' vision additionally to identify passing crap.
"One of the challenges in using star trackers is filtering out items that aren't assumed to be there - clearly, because you are trying to compare what you are able to see against a star catalogue," clarified D-Orbit's Simon Reid. "And, of course, it is those extra objects which in main are the things that are potentially debris"
The financing announcement also coincides with the signing of a new partnership agreement between the Ministry of Defence and UKSA to operate together on distance domain awareness.
Both have valuable assets and interests in orbit which need protecting. And for the UK citizen, this investment has been recently deepened with the buy from bankruptcy of this OneWeb satellite broadband company.
The UK government is currently the part proprietor of one of the biggest spacecraft networks in the skies. OneWeb has so far launched 74 satellites in its own communications constellation, with plans to put up thousands more.
Business Secretary Alok Sharma said:"Countless pieces of space junk orbiting the Earth pose a considerable danger to UK satellite systems which provide the vital services which we all take for granted - from mobile communications to weather forecasting.
"By developing new AI and detector technologies, the seven pioneering space jobs we're backing now will substantially strengthen the UK's capabilities to track these poisonous space items, helping to create new jobs and safeguard the services we rely on in our everyday lives."
Business Secretary Alok Sharma said:"Countless pieces of space junk orbiting the Earth pose a considerable danger to UK satellite systems which provide the vital services which we all take for granted - from mobile communications to weather forecasting.
"By developing new AI and detector technologies, the seven pioneering space jobs we're backing now will substantially strengthen the UK's capabilities to track these poisonous space items, helping to create new jobs and safeguard the services we rely on in our everyday lives."
