Alternatively, you might be interested in what the young company has achieved, and you can get a taste of what has been done (as opposed to what they can do). As when they managed to build- test-deliver two flight solar panels in four weeks for Sunspace & Information Systems, against the norm of six months.  You might just want to play a classic game of asteroids. That’s ok. It’s under the Fun tab.

But if  visit Clyde Space, you’ll find then at the newish Helix building. Helix, defined as a smooth curve in three spaces. This Helix is on Kelvin campus, West of Scotland Business Park and the shell to the smooth growth curve in the free space of small satellite business, Clyde Space.

It’s not so small anymore. In barely four years, former head of power systems at Surrey Satellite Technology, Craig Clark has spun off, founded and grown Clyde Space from winning his first Smart Award, partly used to finance the hire of his first colleague, into a £1m turnover company (90% of those sales are outside the UK, 80% outside the EU) that employs a team of 24 people and  hired another two in June.

June was been a spectacular month for this high tech company, as it is to develop the technology for a Scottish satellite, hopefully to be called Comet after Glasgow’s first steam ship (left replica) launched two centuries ago on the Clyde.

The company is currently in talks to decide what that the satellite will transmit when it is launched from a site in French Guiana, India or Russia in 2012. One aches for broadband for the West of Scotland islands!

"Designing, building and launching Scotland's first satellite has significant outreach ambitions," says Clark. "Too many of our young people choose not to follow careers in science and technology subjects, either through poor advice or ignorance of the scope and potential for these in industry.

"Advances in science and technology are the most important factors in the advancement of our quality of life. Without people taking an interest in science and technology from a young age, we will struggle to move forward at the pace we need."

 Accordingly Clyde Space has launched a Mission Maryhill project to get the young interested in science and technology.

What will get far less publicity, but is equally vital to the company has been June’s audit by the British Standards Institute in June and its ‘recommendation’ for accreditation. That puts the new workshops and the company’s engineering quality onto the plane that makes it able to work for the most covetable tenders and demanding clients.

Behind the glamour of space, lies a whole hatch of subsystems and it is with these that Clyde Space is working flat out to improve and innovate. “You can’t give a presentation at Stanford University without knowing you’ve got to go one better,” jokes Clark. “Ours has to be the best!”

Focus on developments
Currently the focus is on three developments. The first is on improving attitude control systems and three months into the one-year control project. “Attitude determination and control systems are vital for the cubesat frame orientation and how it hangs in space. We’re aiming to exercise 10x the determination of attitude through effect control” says Clark, who adds that interestingly the work is being undertaken by someone with a robotics PhD in MATLAb control, working on the algorithms to VHDL, to watch and check complex control digitisers.

The company is also working on a European Space Agency contract for electric propulsion systems, developing cubsat micro pulse thrusters systems which involve high voltage power supplies and will enable these miniature spacecraft to maintain orbit or to aid de-orbit.

The third development is the ambition to develop a new standard for spacecraft. A self-confessed power engineer, (right) Clark’s hands-on preoccupation is almost lyrical when it comes to fine tuning connections,  systems and fine ‘packing’ the construct that is a cubesat.

He reaches for a PC104 card, as an accountant would pick up a pencil to show you the calculation on paper.

“These headers here are needed for links to the board circuitry so the boards can be stacked in the box. They are made with card and have a bulky connector,” he says with feeling. “We’re working with the CubeSat community to introduce a new system that uses a backplane and a more appropriate connector that would allow us more volume to use, a new standard that would add more functionality.

“We’re looking at a new structure, at adaptive manufacture in plastics, using new technologies, different structures each time, spacing brands and interfaces, using 3D printing to cut out the machining steps, making the whole lighter and more compact.”

For this he says Clyde Space works with Strathclyde University in a Knowledge Technology Partnership (accessing Strathclyde specialist tooling for Dynamic DMEMS measurement, laser micromachining and such) as an application of technology.

“We are also part of a growing Scottish space group,” he says. There is an RF Systems group in Edinburgh with high datarate S band transceiver capabilities, we need to embed micro processors, have deployable antennae, solar array batteries, box the payload, attend to attitude, the platform’s ability to provide more power. It’s all in a 10cm cube box, and we want to double the payload capacity, and even” he laughs “help applications become a reality; there are even plans to play microgravity billiards and games in space using CubeSats.”

While the projects go on, the business goes on. Clyde Space has done a turnkey system this year, launched a couple of cubesat systems on Endeavour, and is involved in work that launched for Malaysia in July.

Walking round his new clean room laboratory (left) about to double in size, finds people working  checking for flaws and faults in the tiny credit card sized,III-Vs semiconductor, multijunction, radiation hardened space solar cells, which are a pricey $300 a piece.

Puurgen spinoff
Quite apart from Clyde Space business, Clark has started a sister organisation Puurgen being run by John Charlick. Asked why the company started Puurgen, Clark simply says it made sense to use the circuit that had been developed for remote power management in another business.

Puurgen has an exclusive license for Clyde Space solar panel peak power tracking technology, for maximising power for smaller scale systems to get 10W out of a solar panel where previously they could only get 6W.  Puurgen targets producers of systems using small solar panels to charge a battery, amongst other interesting applications of high-efficiency, micro power.

Idly suggesting that Clark’s wife must be relieved by his skills when it comes to packing the holiday suitcase, Craig grins disarmingly and tells of driving an old VW to gigs in his youth and the art of packing the drum kit into the back, while also offering a lift home to his mate, John Charlick. Charlick starts to laugh and adds that Clark even putting a jacket over his head in case the police stop them for being overloaded!

Puurgen is now a team of three, built on the use of technical peak power tracking for DC battery charge. It’s a simple circuit that Clyde Space developed and has transferred across. It is for maximising power for smaller scale systems (normally digital LCD screens) initially built for getting 10W out of solar panels when only previously could get 6W.

Consider that Puurgen offers solar power CCTV solutions, solar charge controllers, micro-renewable energy systems and solar power light systems. Applications include roadside and overhead motorway signs, street lighting, caravans and motor homes, parking meter, remote buildings, remote wireless communications services and lighting in off-grid location. 

Charlick says that where excavation has to go on without power cables, off grid energy is attractive for CCTV solutions to theft, asset watch, fly tipping and pollution. There’s even talk of using the system with an RFID reader for inventory control of ship containers. 

With Max Power Point tracking, a standard 290W array is 16.5% more efficient. But with triple junction cell panels, the lightweight kit offers live communications 24/7 and can be taken on and off and fitted up how the user wants it, having been designed that way.

Where Scotland has been slow to move to solar, maybe the spin-off company from Clyde Space can supply the nano template for growth.