Leading small satellite manufacturer, Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL), has set up a new subsidiary in the United States to take advantage of the growing international demand for economical, responsive and highly capable spacecraft for a broad range of applications.

The new company, Surrey Satellite Technology US LLC (SST-US), has opened an office in Colorado and will eventually have centres in California and Washington DC enabling SSTL to work much closer and more efficiently with its customers.

SSTL's Commercial Director, Dr John Paffett, has been appointed CEO of the new company and can see great potential: "The US is the world's largest satellite market and presents a great opportunity for us. Surrey Satellite Technology strives to improve and increase the application and utility of small satellites that address the need for operationally responsive space. With budgets coming under increasing pressure, we've now reached the point where the price performance of some of these systems is opening up space to a whole new range of customers, applications and services."

From the day it was founded, SSTL has had a long association with the US. The first satellite, UoSAT-1, was launched in 1981 in collaboration with NASA. Since then there have been a number of notable achievements, not least the provision of PICOSat to the US Air Force in 2001, and the development of a platform for Los Alamos National Laboratories for the CFESat mission.

More recently, SSTL has been collaborating with Mississippi State University on a range of small satellite initiatives which include lunar studies.

SST-US will start by building on the relationships already established by SSTL and will rapidly expand into a self-contained US entity designing, building and operating a range of spacecraft and sub-systems using US staff.

By recruiting in the US and using existing staff for training, Paffett is already making progress on his plans to develop SST-US into a US managed and US controlled company. "It's all about us applying the SSTL approach to the US. The potential is huge and SSTL's proven ability to meet hard requirements with small satellite engineering on-time and within budget is the perfect fit for US customers."