After a thought-provoking round-table discussion, students, staff and alumni filled a lecture theatre to hear Sir Martin's story of success in his own words. Beginning with an introduction into the current position of SSTL within the aerospace industry, it became clear that this was a company with a huge amount of respect, hard-earned over a 31 year history.
SSTL arose from a team of highly skilled aerospace researchers at the University of Surrey in the 1970s, when the prospects of space exploration lay predominately with the superpowers of the time. Sir Martin explained how his team of dedicated engineers designed a new generation of micro satellites, exploiting easily-available technology to build satellites cheaper and lighter than ever before. After a successful launch of SSTL's first satellite (UoSAT-1), Sir Martin recalled memories of a request from NASA to prepare a follow-up satellite to be launched within 6 months, and the countless days (and nights!) of hard work that entailed.
From there, Sir Martin described the development of SSTL into a fully-fledged satellite company, consistently reducing the weight of spacecraft, whilst simultaneously increasing their capabilities. By incorporating novel Earth observation technologies, SSTL's construction of the Disaster Monitoring Constellation was clearly a proud memory for the company's chairman, having provided almost instant support for the Indian Ocean Tsunami (2004) and Hurricane Katrina (2005).
The sense of intrigue in the audience was clear as Sir Martin continued to describe the vast range of innovations developed across 41 satellites designed and launched over the years, and their contribution towards the global navigation satellite system, Galileo. The enthusiasm shown throughout the lecture, and when answering a diverse round of questions, was a huge motivation for an aspiring aerospace engineer to become involved in the industry being driven forwards by Surrey Space Technology.