Glasgow-built Satellites in Orbit

Glasgow-built satellites designed to revolutionise how data is downloaded from space blast into orbit.

20:20 09 July 2019

A pair of nanosatellites that has the potential to revolutionise how data is downloaded from space hitched a ride on a Russian rocket on 5 July Friday. The supercomputer satellites, which belong to US data and aerospace firm Spire Global, were built by a team based in Glasgow. The firm also has others sites in San Francisco, Boulder, Washington DC, Singapore and Luxembourg.

 

 

 

Graham Turnock, chief executive of the UK Space Agency, said: “Over the past five years, Glasgow has become the best place in Europe to build these innovative, small satellites, with Spire Global alone manufacturing more than 100 on the Clyde,”

 

 

 

Peter Platzer, chief executive of Spire Global, said: “We see these parallel supercomputing scalable devices as a crucially important next step for a new level of accuracy and timeliness in space data analytics,”

 

 

 

“The UK Space Agency and European Space Agency (ESA) have been extremely forward-looking and supportive of Spire’s innovative approach to deploying space technology to solve problems here on Earth.”

 

 

 

Khalil Kably, pioneer programme manager for ESA, added: “The whole idea of the Pioneer Programme is to give European and Canadian industries access to space, rapidly and at low cost.

 

 

 

“As soon as they have an innovative idea, such as supercomputing by Spire here, we want people to be able to try it in orbit.

 

 

 

“It’s the ability to go from a new idea to market very quickly, through in-orbit validation.”