posted 01-05-2014 10:25 AM               

Glaswegian entrepreneur Tom Walkinshaw, 24, is to open a shop next week that he hopes will start a new, "DIY space race", where anyone can buy their own Sputnik - with satellites on sale for as little as £12,000, which rises to £20,000 when you include the cost of launch into orbit.

The satellites aren't, of course, NASA material - around 5cm across, PocketQubes 'hitch' lifts into space on bigger rockets, then spill out to fulfill missions as varied as transmitting radio channels to tracking birds.