About

About our Centre

We are a world leading Centre of Excellence in Space Engineering for small, cost effective space missions. We develop new innovative technologies which are exploited by the space industry and our strategy is to underpin the technical development of the space industry through our advanced research programmes.

We have a multidisciplinary engineering competence that gives us a full end-to-end capability, unique in UK academia, to develop and execute space missions, from concept study to spacecraft design and multi agency incident transfer, to mission operations and exploitation of space data to support engineering research and education.

Spin-out company

Surrey's pioneering small satellite activities started in 1979 as an academic activity at the University, leading to the formation of a highly successful spin-out company Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL). Astrium acquired SSTL in 2009 and established a long-term strategic collaboration with the University to further advance the University’s cutting edge space research capacity.

Facilities

In our labs we carry out cutting edge applied research that covers all the main domains relevant to space engineering, and cost effective missions.

We explore a wide range of engineering issues including:

• Advanced mission analysis
• Astrodynamics (including formation flying) and propulsion
• Payload engineering
• On-board computing, embedded systems and spacecraft internetworks
• Space robotics
• Communications, radar and RF systems
• Remote sensing applications and instrumentation
• Orbit and attitude determination and control
• Power systems and electric propulsion, space plasma and ionising radiation environment and effects
• Nano/pico-satellite technologies
• Planetary rovers and UAVs, spacecraft structures and mechanisms.

We also have our own Satellite Mission Control Centre with full capability to command and control the satellites to execute mission operations and download data for user’s applications.

Explore our facilities