Background and early years During the early decades of the
Cold War era, access to space was effectively the privilege of a handful of
superpowers; by the 1970s, only the most affluent of countries could afford to engage in space programmes due to extreme complexity and expenses involved. The team's first satellite,
UoSAT-1, was assembled in a small university lab, using in a cleanroom fabricated from
B&Q and integrating
printed circuit boards designed by hand on a kitchen table. Many of the technologies used in the design of the DMC satellites, including Internet Protocol use, were tested in space beforehand on SSTL's earlier
UoSAT-12 satellite. During June 2004,
American private space company
SpaceX arranged to acquire a 10% stake in SSTL from Surrey University; speaking on the purchase,
Elon Musk stated: "SSTL is a high-quality company that is probably the world leader in small satellites. We look at this as more a case of similar corporate cultures getting together". The University of Surrey then awarded Musk an
honorary doctorate. In April 2008, the University of Surrey agreed to sell its majority share in SSTL, roughly 80% of the company's capital, to European multinational conglomerate
EADS Astrium. SSTL has remained an independent entity despite all shares having been purchased by
Airbus, the parent company of EADS Astrium. In 2010 and 2012, the firm was awarded contracts to supply 22 navigation payloads for Galileo, the last of which was delivered during 2016. During 2017, SSTL was awarded a contract to supply a further 12 payloads; this was viewed as a coup in light of the political backdrop surrounding
Brexit. During the 2010s, SSTL has been working on various improvements in its satellite technology, such as
synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) as well as smaller and lighter units. According to Luis Gomes, SSTL's head of Earth observation, micro-satellites translate to a lower cost of design, construction and launch, albeit at a cost of a more frequent failure rate, in comparison to larger and more costly units. These features has been marketed towards customers such as the DMC. In summer 2008, Surrey formed an American subsidiary,
Surrey Satellite Technology-US, in
Douglas County, Colorado, intent on serving US customers in the
smallsat market. In June 2017, SSTL announced their intention to close their Colorado satellite manufacturing facility, opting to instead consolidate all of its manufacturing activity in the UK. Sarah Parker, SSTL's managing director, said that the rapid growth of new competing firms in the small satellite sector had changed the marketplace, necessitating reorganisation, which has included the increased use of
outsourcing. == Satellites ==