Queen visits Glasgow satellite maker

Spire designs and manufactures all of its satellites in-house at Glasgow’s Skypark, where it has been since 2015.

“It was an honour to welcome Her Majesty and Her Royal Highness,” said Spire co-founder and v-p engineering Joel Spark. “We were able to demonstrate our technology and how these capabilities are used to inform our understanding of the world. The space industry in Scotland, and across the wider UK, has ambitious targets for growth over the coming decade. At Spire Global, we are determined to play our part.”

The royal party was shown where the satellites are made and given an overview of how the data harnessed from the satellite constellation is used – Spire is a data services provider.

“From space-based earth observation and data analysis to satellite design and manufacture, Scotland is pivotal to the UK’s ambitions in space,” according to UK Space Agency CEO Graham Turnock. “Thanks to its science and engineering strengths and geographical position, Scotland is at the heart of our plans to launch satellites into orbit from home soil in 2022.”

According to Spire, the Scottish Government has “publicly backed the goal of growing Scotland’s space sector to £4bn by 2030”. It said that, according to Scottish Development International, Glasgow manufactures more satellites than anywhere in the world outside of the United States.

Spire also has offices in San Francisco, Boulder Colorado, Washington DC, Luxembourg and Singapore. Since moving to Glasgow it has launched more than 100 satellites, and is due to move to a larger (29,500ft2) building at Skypark this year.

See also: Glasgow-built ‘supercomputer’ nanosatellites launch into orbit