Thu, 22 Oct 2026 The first time Ben Callis looked through SSTL's cleanroom viewing window, he was two years into an Aerospace Engineering degree at the University of Surrey. Inside were SSTL’s S1–4 and NovaSAR, the latter sporting an antenna and shiny insulation that, to Ben, resembled a gilded cheese grater.
 
He wasn't entirely sure what he was looking at. He was, however, sure he wanted to be part of it.
 
That was 2017. Ben joined us for a year-long industrial placement and returned in 2022 as a Mechanical Engineer. These days, he's rather more familiar with what goes into building a satellite, although there's still plenty to learn.
 
On MicroSAR, Ben was entrusted with building and testing the Structural Qualification Model, a representative spacecraft structure used to prove the design before flight. It meant assembling hardware, solving problems as they arose and taking the model through vibration testing at Airbus in Stevenage. For someone relatively early in his career, it was quite a responsibility.
 
"There was a lot to think about and a lot to go wrong."
 
He's now working on the flight spacecraft itself and still gets a kick out of seeing months of design work finally taking physical shape in AIT. Solar arrays deploying, mechanisms behaving as intended, and eventually a launch watched alongside colleagues who helped make it happen.
 
"As almost everything we build is bespoke, it's great to see something working for the first time."
 
In 2025, Ben also represented SSTL at the SmallSat conference in Utah. A conference that began in 1987 with just 45 attendees - one of them our founder Sir Martin Sweeting - now attracts thousands from around the world. For Ben, it was a chance to appreciate just how far the small satellite industry has come, and to discover how many of the people he met already knew SSTL and its work.
 
Nine years on from that first glimpse through the cleanroom window, Ben is now on the inside, helping build the spacecraft that once seemed so impossibly complicated.