Martin Sweeting

Last updated

Sir Martin Sweeting
OBE FRS FREng FIET FRAeS
Cooperation Agreement for a Remote Sensing Satellite Constellation between Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd and The Twenty First Century Aerospace Technology and Beijing Landview Mapping Information Technology (5881315780).jpg
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 (age 73) [1]
Alma mater University of Surrey
Awards
Scientific career
Institutions
Thesis The communications efficiency of electrically short aerials  (1979)
Website surrey.ac.uk/ssc/people/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]

Contents

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.[ quantify ]

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,[ 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]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of Surrey</span> Public university in Guildford, England

The University of Surrey is a public research university in Guildford, Surrey, England. The university received its royal charter in 1966, along with a number of other institutions following recommendations in the Robbins Report. The institution was previously known as Battersea College of Technology and was located in Battersea Park, London. Its roots however, go back to Battersea Polytechnic Institute, founded in 1891 to provide further and higher education in London, including its poorer inhabitants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Institution of Engineering and Technology</span> Professional engineering institution

The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) is a multidisciplinary professional engineering institution. The IET was formed in 2006 from two separate institutions: the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE), dating back to 1871, and the Institution of Incorporated Engineers (IIE) dating back to 1884. Its worldwide membership is currently in excess of 158,000 in 153 countries. The IET's main offices are in Savoy Place in London, England, and at Michael Faraday House in Stevenage, England.

Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, or SSTL, is a company involved in the manufacture and operation of small satellites. A spin-off company of the University of Surrey, it is presently wholly owned by Airbus Defence and Space.

The Disaster Monitoring Constellation for International Imaging (DMCii) or just Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC) consists of a number of remote sensing satellites constructed by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) and operated for the Algerian, Nigerian, Turkish, British and Chinese governments by DMC International Imaging. The DMC provides emergency Earth imaging for disaster relief under the International Charter for Space and Major Disasters, which the DMC formally joined in November 2005. Other DMC Earth imagery is used for a variety of civil applications by a variety of governments. Spare available imaging capacity is sold under contract.

TiungSAT-1 is the first Malaysian microsatellite. The satellite is developed through the technology transfer and training programme between Astronautic Technology Sdn Bhd (ATSB) Malaysia and Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd., United Kingdom. TiungSAT-1 was launched aboard Dnepr rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan on 26 September 2000.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jim Al-Khalili</span> British theoretical physicist, author and broadcaster

Jameel Sadik "Jim" Al-Khalili is an Iraqi-British theoretical physicist, author and broadcaster. He is professor of theoretical physics and chair in the public engagement in science at the University of Surrey. He is a regular broadcaster and presenter of science programmes on BBC radio and television, and a frequent commentator about science in other British media.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, University of Cambridge</span>

The Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy (DMSM) is a large research and teaching division of the University of Cambridge. Since 2013 it has been located in West Cambridge, having previously occupied several buildings on the New Museums Site in the centre of Cambridge.

SNAP-1 is a British nanosatellite in low Earth orbit. The satellite was built at the Surrey Space Centre by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) and members of the University of Surrey. It was launched on 28 June 2000 on board a Kosmos-3M rocket from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia. It shared the launch with a Russian Nadezhda search and relay spacecraft and the Chinese Tsinghua-1 microsatellite.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robin Saxby</span> English engineer

Sir Robin Keith Saxby FREng HonFRS is an English engineer who was chief executive and then chairman of ARM Holdings, which he built to become a dominant supplier of embedded systems.

Derek John Fray is a British material scientist, and professor at the University of Cambridge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John McCanny</span>

Sir John Vincent McCanny is the emeritus Regius Professor of Electronics and Computer Engineering at Queen's University Belfast, and director of the Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology.

The President's Medal, also known as the Royal Academy of Engineering President's Medal, is an award given by the President of the Royal Academy of Engineering. It was first given in 1987.

BILSAT-1 was an Earth observation satellite designed and developed by TÜBİTAK Space Technologies Research Institute and produced in Turkey as part of the Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC) project in the context of a show-how program led by DMC International Imaging of Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wenfei Fan</span> Chinese-British computer scientist

Wenfei Fan is a Chinese-British computer scientist and professor of web data management at the University of Edinburgh. His research investigates database theory and database systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. Michael Brady</span> Researcher in medical-image analysis

Sir John Michael Brady is an emeritus professor of oncological imaging at the University of Oxford. He has been a Fellow of Keble College, Oxford, since 1985 and was elected a foreign associate member of the French Academy of Sciences in 2015. He was formerly BP Professor of Information Engineering at Oxford from 1985 to 2010 and a senior research scientist in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from 1980 to 1985.

PSLV-C28 was the 29th consecutive successful mission of the PSLV program. The PSLV-C28 carried and successfully deployed 5 satellites in the Sun-synchronous orbit. With a launch mass of 320,000 kilograms (710,000 lb) and payload mass of payload mass 1,440 kilograms (3,170 lb), the C28 was the heaviest commercial mission undertaken by the Indian Space Research Organisation and Antrix Corporation. The PSLV-C28 carried three identical optical Earth observation satellites, an optical Earth observation technology demonstrator microsatellite (CBNT-1), and an experimental nanosatellite (De-orbitSail). All the satellites were built by Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL). Although built by SSTL, the "De-orbitSail" belonged to the Surrey Space Centre.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. Roy Taylor</span> English professor of Physics (born 1949)

(James) Roy TaylorFREng is Professor of Ultrafast Physics and Technology at Imperial College London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robin Grimes</span> British nuclear scientist

Sir Robin William Grimes is chief scientific adviser in the Ministry of Defense (MoD) for nuclear science and technology and professor of materials physics at Imperial College London. From February 2013 to August 2018 he served as chief scientific adviser to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). Since November 2021 he has been Foreign Secretary of The Royal Society

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PSLV-C42</span> 44th mission of the Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle program

PSLV-C42 was the 44th mission of the Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) program and its 12th mission in the Core Alone (CA) configuration. PSLV-C42 successfully carried and deployed 2 Earth observation satellites in Sun-synchronous orbits at an altitude of 588 kilometres (365 mi). It was launched on 16 September 2018 by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) from the first launch pad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh. The two international satellites were launched as part of a commercial arrangement between Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) and ISRO's commercial arm Antrix Corporation Limited, run under the auspices of the Indian Government's Department of Space.

The Commercial Lunar Mission Support Services (CLMSS), also called Lunar Mission Support Services (LMSS) is a collaboration between Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) and the European Space Agency (ESA) to develop lunar telecommunications and navigation infrastructure to support lunar scientific and economic development.

References

  1. 1 2 "SWEETING" . Who's Who . Vol. 1998 (online Oxford University Press  ed.). Oxford: A & C Black.(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. 1 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. Archived from the original on 18 July 2020. Retrieved 12 October 2020.
  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.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.