The Satellite Engineering Centre (SEC) aims to be a centre of excellence in satellite engineering research capable of spearheading the development of innovative space technologies for satellite systems designs. SEC was set up using internal funding after NTU has successfully developed a Merlion communication payload and launched it in the Surrey-built UoSat-12 mini-satellite in 1999.

In year 2001, SEC has teamed up with DSO National Laboratories to establish a joint centre CREST (Centre for Research in Satellite Technologies) under a Memorandum of Understanding signed between both parties on 1 Dec 2001.

The formation of CREST is a synergistic effort to combine the systems engineering expertise in DSO and the scientific expertise in NTU to advance Singapore’s capability in satellite engineering R&D.

There are essentially two objectives that CREST intends to achieve:

(1) The first one is to build up the capabilities in fundamental design and engineering development of a complete micro-satellite bus as well as in the dedicate and complex systems integration to a particular mission payload.

(2) The second objective is to conduct at the same time upstream research on micro-satellite enabling technologies, particularly in the subsystem areas.