Who are the workers who will fire Scotland’s space industry?

Other space companies have seen and are expecting similar growth.

This includes satellite producer AAC Clyde Space – which formed out of a merger between Clyde Space and the Swedish company AAC Microtec in 2019.

Chief technical officer Andrew Strain points out that Clyde Space started making satellites 20 years ago with just two staff members.

“The company now for us is around 200 people across eight locations around the world,” he adds.

So where has this growth in staff come from?

“We have people coming from local colleges and universities, we have apprentices. We have people that have worked in parallel industries like assembly and manufacturing that we’ve picked up who have never worked in space before,” Andrew says.

Of the roughly 230 space companies and organisations operational in Scotland, they are often competing with sectors like renewables, oil and gas, defence, or manufacturing to secure workers.

“It’s an ever-evolving thing, it’s growing,” says Ingmar Kamalagharan, the UK Space Agency’s head of education and future workforce.

About 55,000 people work in the space sector across the UK.

He says: “The sector has grown massively over the past 10 years. If we project forwards 10 years, we’ll probably need the same number of people again.”