Glasgow’s Satellite Boom Faces a New Test as Europe Spends Big

When Craig Clark returned to Glasgow in 2005, he could not find a space industry job in his home city. The engineer had graduated from university more than ten years earlier, but the opportunities in his field lay south of the border. Rather than leave again, he decided to found his own company, Clyde Space, and in doing so helped plant the seed of an industrial revival that few could have predicted.

Clark grew up near the River Clyde, the waterway that once made Glasgow synonymous with shipbuilding and heavy engineering. As a child, he absorbed the local pride in the "Clyde-built" label, a byword for craftsmanship and technical excellence. The saying he remembered was that the Clyde made Glasgow and Glasgow made the Clyde. What he did not realise until much later was that the same tradition would reappear in a completely different form: the manufacture of small satellites.

Two decades on, Glasgow has become a European leader in building spacecraft of the CubeSat class. These devices are built around a basic unit measuring just ten centimetres on each side, roughly the size of a Rubik's Cube. Compared with the enormous satellites many people picture, they are far smaller, cheaper and faster to develop. Their modular design allows them to be stacked together and fitted with cameras, sensors, communications gear or other instruments depending on the mission.

The importance of these compact machines extends well beyond the laboratory. Data gathered by satellites of all kinds is now embedded in daily life. It supports communication and navigation, helps track ships and freight, monitors forests and farmland, assists in managing energy networks and improves understanding of climate change. For governments, satellite information can shape policy decisions and guide responses to emergencies. As the technology has improved, space has become a more strategically valuable domain.

The Scottish Government says more small satellites are now built in Glasgow than in any other European city. Across Scotland, the wider space sector brought in £335m of income in 2022-23, a rise of 69% over five years. Excluding conventional satellite television broadcasting, it employed 2,811 people, an increase of 81% over the same period. Those figures reflect how quickly a cluster can grow once it reaches critical mass.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Glasgow's success is that it was never centrally planned. Clyde Space specialised in CubeSats at precisely the moment smaller, cheaper spacecraft were gaining traction. The company went on to build Scotland's first satellite, UKube-1. A crucial part of its foundation was a partnership with the University of Strathclyde, which supplied research expertise, skills and a steady stream of engineering graduates.

Other firms soon followed, including Craft Prospect and Alba Orbital, and a genuine space cluster began to take shape. The American satellite company Spire chose Glasgow for its European base in 2015. Smaller businesses emerged, while established engineering and technology companies joined the supply chain. According to Andrew Strain, chief technology officer at AAC Clyde Space, firms moved to the city because they could see it was possible to operate there and because an ecosystem was beginning to form.

That ecosystem now covers what Daniel Smith, founder of the space marketing firm AstroAgency and a Scottish Government trade and investment envoy for space, describes as an entire small satellite value chain. It stretches from components and satellite manufacturing through to launch services, spaceports and ground stations. The benefits reach beyond space itself. A review commissioned by Space Scotland found that space manufacturing alone accounted for more than 1,000 Scottish jobs in 2022-23, while the wider industry contributed £202m to the Scottish economy.

The growth of the sector has also expanded the pool of knowledge. More than 100 people now work on space-related activity at the University of Strathclyde, where the subject has become a strategic priority, according to Professor Malcolm Macdonald, its chair of applied space technology. The university collaborates directly with commercial space companies on research and technology development. Macdonald recalls that when he graduated there was essentially no local space industry to join.

For all its achievements, Glasgow's position is not guaranteed. The city's rise has coincided with a broader European push, as governments across the continent commit billions of euros to their own satellite industries. That spending could draw investment and jobs away from Glasgow, raising difficult questions about what the Scottish and UK governments should do to support the sector and what role the state should play in backing strategically important industries.

The challenge is familiar to any region that has built an advantage in a fast-moving technological field. Clusters depend on talent, supply chains, research links and customers, and each of these can be cultivated elsewhere with enough public money. Glasgow's head start in small satellites gives it an enviable base, but the decisions taken in the coming years by both industry and government may determine whether the Clyde's engineering tradition continues to thrive in orbit.