Martin Sweeting
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Martin Sweeting OBE FRS FREng FIET FRAeS |
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Martin Sweeting and Wu Shuang sign a Cooperation Agreement for a Remote Sensing Satellite Constellation in 2011
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| Born | 12 March 1951 |
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| Alma mater | University of Surrey |
| Thesis | The communications efficiency of electrically short aerials (1979) |
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Website www |
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Sir Martin Nicholas Sweeting OBE FRS FREng FIET FRAeS (born 12 March 1951) is the founder and executive chairman of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL). 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.
Sweeting was educated at Aldenham School and the University of Surrey, completing a Bachelor of Science degree in 1974 followed by a PhD in 1979 on shortwave antennas.
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. 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, 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.
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