In 2005, Craig Clark returned to his native Glasgow with a plan. After earning his degree more than ten years earlier, he had been forced to look south of the Scottish border for work, because the city offered few opportunities in his chosen field. Undeterred, he founded a company called Clyde Space, and in doing so, he helped plant the seed of an industrial revival that few could have predicted.
Glasgow's identity was once inseparable from the River Clyde and the shipyards that lined it. Generations grew up hearing that the Clyde made Glasgow and Glasgow made the Clyde, a phrase that captured the city's reputation for craftsmanship and heavy engineering. What Clark and others would demonstrate, two decades later, is that this engineering heritage could be reborn in an entirely different form: the manufacture of small satellites.
Today, Glasgow stands as a European leader in building small spacecraft. The Scottish Government says more small satellites are produced in the city than anywhere else in Europe, a remarkable transformation for a place whose industrial story had long been told in terms of decline rather than reinvention.
Much of this output consists of CubeSats, spacecraft whose fundamental building block measures just ten centimetres on each side. Each unit is roughly the size of a Rubik's Cube, making these satellites far smaller, cheaper and faster to develop than the large, complex platforms traditionally associated with space missions.
Their real advantage lies in their modularity. CubeSats can be stacked together and equipped with cameras, sensors or communications gear tailored to a specific task. That flexibility means their applications are extraordinarily broad, spanning weather forecasting, global positioning and much more.
The data these satellites gather has quietly become part of daily life. It supports communication and navigation, helps track ships and freight, monitors forests and farmland, assists in managing energy networks, and deepens understanding of climate change. For governments, such information shapes policy decisions and emergency responses, which is why space has grown into an increasingly strategic domain.
The roots of Glasgow's success were, perhaps surprisingly, not the product of deliberate planning. Clyde Space proved to be one of the key catalysts. The firm specialised in CubeSats at precisely the moment the market for smaller, cheaper spacecraft began to take off, and it went on to build Scotland's first satellite, UKube-1.
A crucial element was the partnership with the University of Strathclyde, which supplied research expertise, skills and a steady pipeline of engineering talent. Other companies soon followed, including Craft Prospect and Alba Orbital, and a genuine space cluster began to take shape.
In 2015, the American satellite company Spire selected Glasgow as the site of its European base, a decision that signalled the city's growing credibility. Smaller firms emerged, while established engineering and technology businesses joined the supply chain, deepening the local industrial ecosystem.
Andrew Strain, chief technology officer at AAC Clyde Space, the company formed after Clyde Space was acquired by Sweden's AAC Microtec, says firms moved to Glasgow because they could see it was possible to operate there and because an ecosystem was already forming. Glasgow remains the group's primary satellite manufacturing site, a testament to the strength of the local base.
According to Daniel Smith, founder of the space marketing firm AstroAgency and a trade and investment envoy for the Scottish Government on space, the city now hosts an entire small satellite value chain. That chain stretches from components and satellite manufacturing through to launch services, spaceports and ground stations.
The economic benefits extend well beyond the companies directly involved. A review commissioned by Space Scotland found that space manufacturing alone supported more than 1,000 Scottish jobs in 2022-23, while the wider industry contributed £202m to the Scottish economy.
Nationally, the picture is similarly strong. Across Scotland, the broader space sector generated £335m in income in 2022-23, an increase of 69% over five years. Excluding traditional satellite television broadcasting, it employed 2,811 people, up 81% over the same period.
As the industry has expanded, so has the associated 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 for him to enter. Today, graduates leaving the university can step straight into roles in the sector, a shift that illustrates how thoroughly the employment landscape has changed.
Yet the success story now confronts a serious challenge. Governments across Europe are committing substantial sums to their own satellite industries, raising the prospect that investment and jobs could be drawn away from Glasgow. The question facing policymakers in both Edinburgh and London is what, if anything, they should do to protect the city's hard-won position, and what role the state ought to play in supporting industries deemed strategically important.
For now, Glasgow's satellite sector remains a striking example of how an old industrial city can find a new niche. But the source article makes clear that the city's leading figures no longer regard its position as secure, and the coming years will test whether the cluster built over two decades can withstand a continent-wide surge in competition.
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