From São José dos Campos to Surrey, Renato Magalhaes brings deep expertise, international experience, and passion for spacecraft power systems to our missions at SSTL. A proud member of our international brigade, Renato has been part of our Power Engineering team since 2021. Here's his story in his own words:
“I studied Electrical Engineering at the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica back home in Brazil, graduating in 1999. My first job was in the oilfield industry working for Schlumberger in the EUA, until I joined the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE) in 2002, where I stayed for 18 years.
At INPE, I focused on much the same as I do here at SSTL: Power Supply subsystem design, test, analysis, and work package management.
My work took me to France in 2014 for a year as an electrical architect of a geostationary satellite at Thales Alenia, and in 2009 I was a research visitor at the University of Padua, Italy, working on the development of a new DC/DC converter topology.
I also completed both a master’s and a doctorate while at INPE and taught in the graduate programme there.Then I joined SSTL in December 2021 and really appreciate the variety of engineering activities across multiple missions – it makes each day unique.
What I especially love about the space industry is that the power system is a truly multidisciplinary field, interacting with all other subsystems, which makes the work very challenging. And because spacecraft power systems are autonomous and uninterrupted, the job of designing, analysing, testing and manufacturing them is a fascinating part of electronics engineering.”
We're lucky to have Renato's experience and calm authority on the team – thank you for all you do!