SSC/SSTL Partnership

The Surrey Space Centre is a fully integrated mix of academic researchers and a University owned commercial company. This is a unique facility designed to exploit the full potential of an academic research organisation generating novel ideas for space applications and the development of small satellites, and a commercial organisation that can exploit these techniques in cutting-edge products.

The company obtains great advantage of having an academic research group leading the development of new systems. This guarantees that new technologies, as they are developed, can be incorporated into products. The power of small satellites is to exploit the technological advances in the miniaturisation of electronics, use of smart materials and leading research in modelling and control for mission analysis.

The research group benefits from having a facility in space which enables research staff and students to actually perform experiments in space. Most of our research staff in the centre develop hardware or algorithms which are flown in missions and the data obtained from space enables new technologies to be adapted for space use most efficiently.

The two groups are separate entities within the University, the company being fully owned by the University of Surrey. An umbrella agreement has been agreed between these two organisations which allows academics to work on commercial projects and company engineers to work on research propjects seemlessly.