A Guildford-based British company, born from the University of Surrey, that builds and operates small satellites for Earth observation, navigation, communications and science.
Surrey Satellite Technology Limited, known as SSTL, designs, builds and operates small satellites. Instead of making a satellite the size of a bus, it specialises in smaller spacecraft that can be built faster and more affordably, together with the subsystems and optical instruments inside them. Its satellites are used for Earth observation, navigation, communications and science, with jobs such as monitoring farmland, tracking disasters and relaying signals. It also runs a spacecraft operations centre that talks to satellites in orbit, around the clock, through ground stations around the world.
The story starts at the University of Surrey, where Professor Sir Martin Sweeting led a research group in the late 1970s that tested ordinary commercial electronic parts in space. Their first satellite, UoSAT-1, launched in 1981 with NASA's help, and it kept working more than five years beyond its planned three-year life. SSTL was set up in Guildford in 1985 as a spin-off from the university. In 2002 it moved into Earth observation with the Disaster Monitoring Constellation, and it built GIOVE-A, the first test satellite for Europe's Galileo navigation system. We did not find a formal mission statement on the pages we read, so we have not invented one.
SSTL is based on the University Research Park in Guildford, Surrey, where its assembly, integration and test hall and its operations centre are located. A 2016 company news story described the hall as holding sixteen spacecraft in manufacture at once. Its owner is Airbus Defence and Space, which bought the University of Surrey's majority stake in 2008, but it continues to trade under its own name and has been described as an independent entity within Airbus. The company opened a US office in Colorado in 2008 and closed it in 2017, bringing its manufacturing together in the UK. Its current work includes the Lunar Pathfinder spacecraft, a communications satellite for the Moon, and Galileo navigation payloads.
The company's 2016 news page said about 500 people worked there, while Wikipedia gives about 350, so headcount is uncertain. Its 2016 page also lists training and development programmes, consultancy and mission studies for customers such as ESA, NASA, governments and businesses. Andrew Cawthorne is listed as Group Executive Chairman and as Managing Director from December 2024. We found no culture statement.
A satellite maker needs many kinds of people. There are electronics and software engineers, spacecraft designers, technicians who assemble and test hardware, mission operators who fly the satellites day to day, and analysts who turn images and signals into useful information. Support teams cover finance, procurement and quality. Physics, engineering, computing and maths are common starting points, but practical skills in building and testing delicate hardware matter just as much. Check the SSTL website for what is open now.
Website: www.sstl.co.uk
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