Clyde Space CubeSat: Scotland's 1st Spacecraft Is Tiny Satellite

An artist's illustration of UKube-1, Scotland's first satellite, in orbit. It launches in 2013. 

CREDIT: Clyde Space

cotland's first satellite will soon find a home in orbit around the Earth — a forerunner of things to come under a collaborative, national nanosatellite program in the UK.

Dubbed UKube-1, the small, novel CubeSat spacecraft has been constructed by Clyde Space in Glasgow and is completing final testing for launch later this year onboard a Russian Soyuz-2 rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The advanced UKube-1 nanosatellite has been designed and manufactured by Clyde Space at their high-tech facility at the West of Scotland Science Park.

The petite but powerful spacecraft is chock full of payloads that include the first GPS device aimed at measuring space weather in Earth's plasmasphere — the inner-most layer of the planet's magnetosphere.

The satellite also comes equipped with a camera that will take pictures of the Earth from space and test the effect of radiation on space hardware using a new generation of imaging sensor and an experiment to demonstrate the feasibility of using cosmic radiation to improve the security of communications satellites and to flight test lower cost electronic systems.

The UKube-1 satellite also totes a payload made up of five experiments that UK students and the public can interact with — a true "outreach" program into space.


A recent visitor to take a look at UKube-1 was Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland.

"It's one small satellite for Clyde and a giant leap for their extraterrestrial export business and a new hope for space science in Scotland," Salmond said.

UKube-1 is a UK Space Agency mission. The mission has been funded jointly by Clyde Space and a number of funding partners including the UK Space Agency, the Science and Technology Facilities Council, the Technology Strategy Board and Scottish Enterprise.

As well as the platform and payload elements of the mission, UKube-1 is being supported by three UK ground stations.

"We started designing our nanosatellite platform in 2008 as a means to stimulate some funding from the UK government as part of a national CubeSat program," Craig Clark, chief executive officer of Clyde Space said. Nanosatellites are the fasting growing space sub-sector, with the UK able to tap into both heritage and expertise that primes the pump in building future small satellites, Clark added.

Clark said that there are a number of new developments from Clyde Space on the mission including deployable solar panels — there are three on UKube-1 — as well as advanced attitude and control technology, a sophisticated miniature sun sensor and specialized software that other CubeSats can use.