From Glasgow to Orbit: Scotland’s Small Sattelite Sector Shines at 2024 Space-Comm Expo Scotland
16th Sep 2024
Scotland’s bustling ‘small satellite’ design and manufacture sector was praised by industry this week at the 2024 Space-Comm Expo Scotland in Glasgow, with participants warned not to lose momentum.
Glasgow: A Historical Hub for Small Satellite Innovation
Glasgow has been a hub for small satellite design and manufacture for decades, not least since the formation of AAC Clyde Space in 2005. Today, dozens of small satellite companies have been created or moved into Scotland, supporting a robust local supply chain.
Speaking on a panel at the conference on Thursday, the UK Department for Business and Trade’s head of space Joshua Broom noted that the UK is “the birthplace of small satellites”, and Scotland continues to hold the title for the second-largest producer of satellites after the USA.
“We were pioneers, and we still are, in payloads,” he added.
Tom Walkinshaw, founder and CEO of Glasgow-based Alba Orbital, manufacturer of the PocketQube satellites, the Albapod satellite deployment systems, and Unicorn-1 and Unicorn-2 satellite platforms, agreed.
He said the growth of the industry around Glasgow, in particular, has been uniquely and “largely organic”.
“It’s not really been like the government said 20 years ago, ‘We’re going to have a small satellite sector in Glasgow’; it came through people taking risks and betting themselves,” he said, “So I think other can take advantage of the phenomenon and the opportunity.”
Industry Perspectives on Scotland’s Leadership
However, the industry was warned not to become complacent, and to keep innovating in order to keep Scotland at the forefront of space manufacturing.
“We like to say, perhaps too often, that the UK is ‘world leading’ in this [but] small satellite manufacturing is genuinely one of the areas that can point to and say ‘we have a track record of being world leaders in this’,” Broom said.
“But that is not a given. Everyone else is catching up. Everyone’s introducing new technologies, diversifying their supply chains, growing them. And so we need to make sure the UK is doing better.”
To keep Scotland at the peak of space ingenuity, and a market leader for small satellites, Broom said that there needs to be deeper engagement between academia and industry, to support innovation and widescale commercial adoption.
While Scotland and the wider UK have some of the leading universities in space science, Broom said that to keep up the momentum seen in decades past and with global demand for small satellites, there needs to be deeper engagement between academia and industry.
He said the local academic and R&D base is “extremely strong”, however its important for academia to question how its developments can “pull through” into commercialised products and local industry at scale.
“If we want Scotland small satellite manufacturing to remain the second largest producer of satellites outside of the United States, then we need to understand how we can take that research and development, that academic excellence, into the next generation of world leading small satellite manufacturing, small satellite technology,” he said.
Scotland’s Path to Becoming a European Hub
OHB’s head of procurement platforms and RF-payloads, Daniel Bindel, agreed, and said Scottish companies now have a prime opportunity to become the European hub for end-to-end small satellite manufacture and launch, and to begin selling in-space services – such as earth observation or in-orbit manufacturing – directly to customers.
“It’s certainly relevant for future investments, that you not just invest into people building spacecraft, but people building a small spacecraft, and operating them, launching them, and providing a service to a customer,” he said.
“The economy here in Scotland could handle it on their own.. and you go from building the, hardware, to using the hardware and selling the service.”
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