Glasgow-based Craft Prospect recently completed its preliminary design review for Ops-Sat VOLT, a €17 million (£14.5m) satellite mission backed by the European Space Agency (ESA), the UK Space Agency (UKSA) and involving a majority of UK and Scottish partners across the supply chain.

The satellite will be equipped with a classical and quantum optical laser communication unit, an intelligent hyperspectral imager and processing chain for climate studies, and an experimenter platform for in-orbit experiments.

“VOLT is bringing absolutely everything the company does into one mission,” said Jeffrey.

“VOLT has been around 6 years in the making. It started initially as the business focused on developing its capabilities in quantum technologies, machine learning for space operations and systems engineering for complex and novel mission applications.

“These capabilities developed through a series of incremental projects initially partially funded by organisations such as the UK Space Agency, Scottish Enterprise, CEOI, ESA and Innovate UK.

“This really helped us mature the technologies and demonstrate that we can develop early technologies and mission concepts to a mature stage , which in turn led to commercial contracts and the formulation of how to bring it all together into the one novel mission, which has become VOLT. 

Space-based Quantum Key Distribution

One of the proposed use cases of the VOLT satellite mission will be to establish space-based quantum key distribution, Which is scheduled to launch in 2025.

In an era where all kinds of traditional encryption schemes are being broken, quantum cryptography stands to be the most secure method going forward. According to Fortune Business Insights, the global quantum cryptography market size is projected to grow from around £119.3m in 2024, to £486.7m by 2032. 

Rolling out the technology can be tricky, however. As it stands, quantum cryptography is mostly reliant on ground based utility systems, which while perfectly effective, can only deliver information kilometres at a time. 

“For financial organisations, or banks all over the world, wanting to encrypt all these individual financial transactions, you really need a global system,”  Jeffrey explained. 

This is where space quantum key distribution proves to be useful. “You’ve got a satellite that can communicate anywhere in the world through a set of ground terminals.” 

“There isn’t really any other kind of quantum system that can give you the same level of security at a global level as a space-based quantum key distributor,” she said. “It’s augmenting the existing infrastructure, and it’s helping you provide that global service.”

Leveraging AI 

One aspect of the VOLT mission of particular interest is a context imager. This helps circumvent one of the biggest hurdles facing space-based communications – clouds. 

The imager is a camera system that can either look ahead or down towards the ground to take a photo. From there, it uses a back end processor with AI algorithms deployed on board which is used to pinpoint areas of clouds. 

“On the quantum side, what we’re using it for is to understand where cloud areas are, so that you can make the decision in space whether you want to try and communicate with a ground terminal, or whether it makes more sense to point to another location or schedule later connection with the ground,” Jeffrey continued. 

The AI use cases don’t end there though, according to Jeffrey. 

She says: “We [also] have the context imager which can be used for initial feature detection, such as cloud detection, to help the satellite make informed decisions. Then we have a separate high resolution hyper spectral imager, which is connected to a data processing unit which you can also deploy AI algorithms on to do things like smart compression to reduce downlink requirements, or analyse the images to produce specific data products onboard prior to downlink. 

“A key demonstration on VOLT will be to investigate and show how this can be done in an assured and trusted way, in that while the data is going through many processing stages, we can assure that it has not been manipulated by an untrusted third party before reaching the end user.”

Scottish Space Ecosystem

When looking at the state of the Space sector globally, we can categorise it in two sections: new space, which includes smaller, more agile space companies, and traditional space which are larger space organisations, that do large interplanetary missions. 

“The thing that’s really helped us is that Scotland, in general, has focused on new space,” Jeffrey asserted.  

New space used to be associated with high risk, but some companies now have decades of experience under their belts, and that is just no longer the case, she believes.

“Things are a lot more sophisticated now, so I don’t think new space is associated with low quality anymore.”

Now, new space has turned into a dynamic industry which develops missions at the intersection of quality, cost, and time. “That’s what the new space industry is trying to do.”

That kind of spirit was a pull factor for organisations to set up base here. Scotland has a number of Universities which offer spinouts to the new space industry and industry incubators that make Scotland a place where new space can thrive.

According to ADS Group –  the UK trade association for aerospace, security, defence, and space — Scotland’s aerospace and space sectors generated over £4 billion in its most recent facts and figures report.

According to them, Scotland’s space sector saw a turnover of £3.1 billion, while its aerospace (both within and outside Earth’s atmosphere) sector yielded £1.1bn. 

In terms of employment, Scotland’s aerospace sector directly employed around 4,500 people, while the space sector employed 8,500. 

The challenge, Jeffrey believes, is working together. 

“It’s getting more competitive,” she said. “and now I think we need to figure out how we can all work together and how we all kind of get our own piece of the pie.”

What makes new space dynamic is how much can be done in a short period of time, and according to Jeffrey, there is a lot that larger organisations can benefit from. 

“If we want to keep growing, we need to try and build our relationships with those larger organisations, we need to collaborate more with different space clusters down south as well, because a lot of people don’t know that the Scottish space industry exists,” said Jeffrey.

According to Jeffrey, here in Scotland, we “need to keep in mind what can be done to support and develop the home-grown business here in Scotland.”

“So it’s more about developing the relationships and trying to build our capability, but without creating a majority organisation that might destabilise the nice relationships that we’ve got going.”

Part of this too, is not just working together, but retaining local talent from moving out of the Scottish space industry to roles elsewhere.

“Scotland tends to focus more on small satellites and new space and people tend to think that as you get more experienced, then you go to the more traditional space, and a lot of that is based down South or in other countries. 

“So if we really want to retain the people and retain the opportunities, then we need to keep expanding our capabilities and showcasing all the incredible opportunities that Scotland already has.”

Scaling in Scotland

Craft Prospect is a startup that emerged in Glasgow from its conception to present day. Like many startups in Scotland, it got by largely by government grants and the strong stream of local graduates. 

“The UK Space Agency has a lot of grants that you can apply to,” she said. “Another thing that has been really good is they’ve made it a lot more financially viable to be able to work with different universities and for large organisations to work with SMEs.”

“In some funding calls, if you collaborate with an SME or research organisation, the percentage of funding given, known as match funding, increases and I think that’s a really nice way to do it,” she continued. 

“You’re getting part funded to be able to keep developing, and you do still have to put money into it, but then it becomes a lot more financially valuable.

“But you’re also building relationships with universities, and growing that relationship helps you develop new technologies and expand your reach a little bit as well.”

However, like many other startups in Scotland, when it comes to scaling and turning from R&D to becoming a profitable business, there is less and less support. 

“I think when you get to be a company our size, approaching 30 people now and we’re trying to make the transition from doing a lot of R&D to becoming more commercially sustainable, I don’t think there’s a huge amount of support to help you get there.”

“I think there’s a lot of support when you’re starting out, you can get a lot of grants to get you going, but after that everything is kind of up to you.”

“It’s more the private investment route that you need to go down.”

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This story is indicative of trends in the tech and startup sphere in Scotland as a whole when it comes to starting a business, and getting hung out when seeking late-stage support. 

Funding incubators such as Techscaler, which focus on early stage startups and novice entrepreneurs are a dime a dozen, and mostly aim to connect and kick start entrepreneurship. Once a company grows to a point where it is looking to take that next step however, support could be in short supply. 

This is why we see many Scottish companies making exits as soon as they reach a substantial size. This isn’t to say that the support given to startups in early stages is a poor decision, or that startups in Scotland operate under some glass ceiling when it comes to scaling. 

Rather, it is a story of business leaders getting to a point where few have gotten before, and needing to carve out their own route forward.