Space pioneer wins Queen’s Award

The company behind Scotland’s first satellite has been recognised with a Queen’s Award for Enterprise.

Clyde Space of Glasgow, developer of the UKube-1 satellite which launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in 2014 in what was a Scottish engineering first, was one of just three companies north of the border to be recognised in the 2017 awards.

Clyde Space was recognised in the innovation category for its cutting-edge CubeSat technology and the impact it has had in making satellites more accessible and affordable from a commercial stand point.

The group’s clients include Nasa, the European Space Agency, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and the US military.

Around 90% of Clyde Space’s products are exported overseas and the company supports, in some form, 40% of all global CubeSat missions globally.

“We’ve gone from subsystems provider to offering full turnkey solutions, developing over 70 satellites in 2016 alone with the capacity to manufacture 10 spacecraft per month,” Clyde Space chief executive Craig Clark said.

“The demand for mass-produced spacecraft is driving our rapid growth and further confirms our position as a global leader in the design, manufacture and export of CubeSats.

“Resulting from our mission successes and space flight heritage our innovative satellite solutions are more capable and highly integrated than similar solutions available in the market and push the boundaries of what is possible with a CubeSat.”

Glasgow-based drug development firm ClinTec International and Glencairn Crystal Studio of East Kilbride are the other Scottish award recipients.

A Clyde Space technician works on a cube satellite.