Martin Sweeting

Sir Martin Nicholas Sweeting OBE FRS FREng FIET FRAeS[2] (born 12 March 1951) is the founder and executive chairman of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL).[3] 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.[4]

Sir Martin Sweeting

OBE FRS FREng FIET FRAeS
Martin Sweeting and Wu Shuang sign a Cooperation Agreement for a Remote Sensing Satellite Constellation in 2011
Born
Martin Nicholas Sweeting

(1951-03-12) 12 March 1951[1]
Alma materUniversity of Surrey
Awards
Scientific career
Institutions
ThesisThe communications efficiency of electrically short aerials (1979)
Websitesurrey.ac.uk/ssc/people/martin_sweeting/

Education

Sweeting 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.[5]

Career and research

With 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,[6] 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.

Awards and honours

In 2000 Sweeting was awarded the Mullard Award by the Royal Society and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in the same year.[2] 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, and named as one of the "Top Ten Great Britons." 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
  1. "SWEETING". Who's Who. Vol. 1998 (online Oxford University Press ed.). Oxford: A & C Black. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. Anon (2000). "Professor Sir OBE FREng FRS". London: royalsociety.org. Archived from the original on 17 November 2015. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:
    "All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License." --"Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies". Archived from the original on 25 September 2015. Retrieved 9 March 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  3. Guildford's SSTL leads world in small satellite supply, Clive Cookson, Financial Times, 12 June 2015.
  4. "Guildford Roll of Honour | University of Surrey – Guildford". Surrey.ac.uk. Retrieved 26 February 2016.
  5. Sweeting, Martin Nicholas (1979). The communications efficiency of electrically short aerials (PhD thesis). University of Surrey. OCLC 500574846.
  6. Britain's spaceman, The Economist Technology Quarterly Q2 2015, 30 May 2015.
  7. "Times Higher Awards, SSTL innovation". 2006.
  8. "Awards - Royal Institute of Navigation". 2020.
  9. "The Faraday Medallists". 2019.
  10. "Professor Sir Martin Sweeting scoops Space Research award | University of Surrey – Guildford". Surrey.ac.uk. 6 August 2014. Retrieved 26 February 2016.
  11. "Professor Martin Sweeting, inventor of microsatellites". BBC.
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