Wed, 03 Dec 2025 One of the great joys of this series is highlighting the people whose talent, curiosity and dedication played a fundamental part in shaping SSTL across so many missions, technologies and eras. Today we spotlight Chris Jackson, a long-serving member of our “foreign legion”, someone who rose to Chief Engineer before heading home to the Southern Hemisphere… only to find his way back to us once again.

“I joined SSTL in 1994, leaving New Zealand for Guildford to work in what already felt like the most exciting corner of the space industry. At the time SSTL was deeply involved in amateur radio satellites, and I’d been writing control-station software for AMSAT missions, so it was a natural leap.

SSTL was tiny back then. I started as a software engineer, writing both flight and ground software - work that helped automate large parts of our operations and shape the ‘lights-out’ philosophy we became known for. By 1996 I was managing the operations and ground-segment team, travelling the world to install and commission systems in Thailand, Malaysia, China, Chile and Nigeria. Commissioning usually ran from the customer site, so those years were a real immersion in the tech-transfer side of what SSTL does best.

In 2003 we won the ESA contract for Giove-A, the first Galileo satellite. I worked across operations, flight software and some system engineering - and after launch in 2005 I continued to run the spacecraft and manage the ESA interface before moving into systems engineering full-time.

In 2009 I led the engineering team working with OHB to bid for the first batch of Galileo FOC satellites. That partnership ultimately delivered a constellation of spacecraft, with SSTL producing the navigation payloads and later supporting Airbus on the platform for the second-generation system.

From 2015 to 2018 I managed the engineering team on Quantum - at 3.5 tonnes a huge step up for SSTL and a genuinely transformative development programme. In 2018 I became Chief Engineer and Head of Systems, a role I held until 2021 when the chance arose to return to New Zealand during the pandemic.

I began consulting again for SSTL in 2023 on an innovative mission study, and by mid-2025 I was back leading another talented engineering team. After 30 years, the thing that’s kept me hooked is the same as the day I walked in: the cradle-to-grave engineering culture and the chance to help deliver missions that genuinely break new ground.”

As ever, we salute colleagues like Chris who shaped SSTL’s past, enrich its present, and continue to build the future - wherever in the world they happen to call home.