Glasgow the final frontier. Craig Clark, the managing director of Scotland's only space company, is boldly going where no Scottish entrepreneur has gone before.

Clark, a 1994 graduate of Glasgow University who set up his fledgling company Clyde Space just 18 months ago with the help of Scottish Enterprise, is determined to secure a place for Scotland in the global space race.

Now Clark has another dream - he wants one day to see one of his company's products on another planet.

From its base at the city's West of Scotland Science Park, Clark and his staff of four - hopefully soon to be expanded to 15 - create systems that power satellites, primarily by using solar panels.

Now the firm has taken that first giant step into orbit after striking a £130,000 deal to design and supply the solar power system for a satellite, being launched later this year by Nakasuka Laboratory at the University of Tokyo, to monitor lightning storms on Earth.

That agreement marks the company's first major deal and for the first time it also places Scotland firmly on the international star map of companies that supply the global space industry.

"I think it would be an amazing thing for Glasgow and Scotland, which has this incredible history of engineering and building ships, to be able to take that kind of expertise and reputation into space," said Clark, 33, who spent 11 years working with English space firms but returned home last year to establish Clyde Space.

Clark previously worked with Surrey Satellite Technology which, under Professor Sir Martin Sweeting, more or less invented the idea of the small satellite.

His work there also involved designing the fly-wheel system for a comet lander on the Rosetta space programme for the European Space Agency. Rosetta is due to touch down on a comet in the far reaches of the galaxy in about eight years' time.

He also worked on the power system for ESA's Galileo satellite, which is scheduled to be launched next year. "We're getting more and more inquiries from organisations like NASA all the time," Clark said, adding that he expects his company to break even this financial year with a £750,000 turnover.

Thanks to his speciality training and expertise, Clyde Space is now the only company in the world that specialises in power systems for small satellites, one of the major boom areas in the global space industry.

He said: "The systems that Clyde Space produce are targeted towards smaller satellites of around 1kg upwards.

"These smaller satellites are a growth area because they are relatively inexpensive to launch, around £500,000.

"The area I operate in is not the most glamourous, but thankfully it is one of the most essential."

Clark, like all directors of fledgling companies, faces many issues in trying to get his company off the ground.

"I find that when I attend international conferences, most people think that Clyde Space is my own name, rather than the name of my company," he added with a laugh. "But once we are over that, most space organisations are extremely interested in what we do."