Professor Sir Martin Sweeting, founder of the company and executive chairman, said: "We have come a long way since the early days of our first microsatellites. There have been of course many challenges and as many highlights throughout the last three decades."
Today, the company employs 500 staff and assembles satellites and space hardware in a suite of state-of-the-art cleanrooms and laboratories, but its origins were more humble: a home-made structure in the corner of a University of Surrey laboratory served as a 'cleanroom' where Sweeting, then a PhD student, led a team of 10 to design and manufacture UoSAT-1, an experimental small satellite built using commercial-off-the-shelf components and launched in 1981.
The UoSAT-1 spacecraft, weighing 72kg and the size of a small fridge, was lighter, quicker to build, and much cheaper than traditional satellites of the time, which were generally the size of a double-decker bus. The funding Sweeting was given to achieve this was £1000.
SSTL is currently working on a number of missions including launching telecommunications, observation and imaging satellites for countries all over the world. These satellites range from £2.5m to £30m to build.
Despite the rise in costs of the satellites, SSTL works from the same blueprints. "We have far exceeded the computing power of UoSAT-1, but we still work with roughly the same dimensions - our standard platform is the size of a washing machine and weighs approximately 70 to 90kg," Joelle Sykes, communications manager at SSTL, explained. "However, we could make a cubesat of 10 x 10cm with more computing power than UoSat-1. The size of the satellite is constrained by the requirement to have enough solar panels to generate power – cubesats can't support large enough solar panels for that."
To date, SSTL has launched 43 satellites, with a further four satellites due to launch this year. The company currently has more than 20 spacecraft in manufacture or awaiting launch, as well as 22 payloads for Galileo, Europe's satellite navigation system.
