|
Martin Sweeting
Sir Martin Nicholas Sweeting (born 12 March 1951) is the founder and executive chairman of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL).[2] SSTL is a corporate spin-off from the University of Surrey, where Sweeting is a Distinguished Professor who founded and chairs the Surrey Space Centre.[3] EducationSweeting was educated at Aldenham School and the University of Surrey, completing a Bachelor of Science degree in 1974[1] followed by a PhD in 1979 on shortwave antennas.[4] Career and researchWith a team he created UoSAT-1, the first modern 70 kg (150 lb) 'microsatellite,' which he convinced the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to launch, as a secondary piggyback payload into Low Earth orbit alongside a larger primary payload in 1981. This satellite and its successors used amateur radio bands to communicate with a ground station on the University campus. During the 1980s Sweeting took research funding to develop this new small-satellite concept further to cover possible applications such as remote sensing, and grew a small satellites research group that launched a number of later satellites. This led to the formation of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd in 1985, with four employees and a starting capital of just £100,[5] and to a know-how technology transfer program, introducing space technologies to other countries. SSTL was later spun off from the University and sold to Astrium in 2009 for a larger sum.[quantify] Awards and honoursIn 2000 Sweeting was awarded the Mullard Award by the Royal Society and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in the same year.[6] In recognition of his pioneering work on cost-effective spacecraft engineering, Sweeting was knighted in 2002. In 2006 he received the Times Higher Education Supplement Award for Innovation for the Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC).[7] In 2008 he was awarded the Royal Institute of Navigation Gold Medal[8] for the successful GIOVE-A mission for the European Galileo system, awarded the Sir Arthur Clarke Lifetime Achievement Award,[citation needed] and named as one of the "Top Ten Great Britons."[by whom?] In 2009 he was awarded the Faraday Medal by the Institute of Engineering and Technology,[9] and an Elektra Lifetime Achievement Award by the European Electronics Industry. In 2014, the Chinese Academy of Sciences award.[10] In 2021 he was a guest on BBC Radio 4 programme The Life Scientific.[11] References
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
.jpg)
,_University_of_Surrey.jpg)
