Sir Martin receives French award

Thursday, December 20. 2007

Each year the French Academy of Air and Space awards its Grand Prize in recognition of a “person or a team, European or international, who stands out because of a high-quality scientific, technical or cultural action concerning aerospace, by contributing to or helping spread new knowledge.” The Academy has awarded this year’s Silver medal to SSTL founder and Group Executive Chariman Sir Martin Sweeting.

The Grand Prize award ceremony was held on November 23, 2007 during the Academy’s annual assembly in the “Salle des Illustres” at the Place du Capitole, Toulouse.

Mr Jean Broquet, former Technical Director of EADS Astrium, France, received the award on behalf of Martin during the open session of Air and Space Academy on Friday Nov 23rd at Toulouse. The presentation of Martin's achievements and successes was made by Gérard Brachet former head of CNES and currently Vice President of the Academy. He gave a general view of Martin's activities and of his pioneer role and he pointed out, in particular, the major role of SSTL for securing the frequency slots allocated to Galileo, with GIOVE-A.

Jean Broquet had the opportunity to say few words including a reference to Martin's colleagues of both SSTL and Surrey Space Centre (SSC) for their contribution to the SSTL missions.

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Fly your experiment in space!

Thursday, December 13. 2007
In the news

BNSC and SSTL are offering UK schools the chance to fly an experiment on one of the small satellites built by SSTL. Any UK students, either individuals or teams, aged between 14 and 18 can enter their experimental package. Speaking about the Space Experiment on the BBC news website today Brainchild Dr Stuart Eves (SSTL) :

Satellites affect everyone on the planet. They deliver telephone communications and TV programmes across the globe, enable the safe navigation of ships and aircraft and provide the timing signals that are used to coordinate the national power grid and mobile phone calls.

The BNSC's Dr Ian Gibson also commented in the BBC report, expressing the essence of the Space Experiment.
This hands-on competition should be fun as well as educational

To hear more you can also tune in to the Today Programme on Radio 4. Use the "Listen Again" function for this morning (Thursday 13th December) and search around 6:55 am.

SSTL small satellite
The winning experiment can weigh up to 1kg and will have a development budget of up to £100,000. The deadline for receiving initial proposals is 28th February 2008, so get your skates on!

BNSC and SSTL hope that the competition will stimulate interest in Space, with many entrants. Out of the hopefuls, six finalists will be announced at the UK Space Conference at Charterhouse in March 2008 and invited to submit more detailed proposals for consideration.

The winners will be announced at the IAF Congress in Glasgow in October 2008 and the winning experiment will be integrated onto an SSTL mission due to fly in the 2010 timeframe.

The experiment could aim to measure some aspect of the space environment, investigate some aspect of the Earth, or test a new satellite technology in Low Earth Orbit What to include in an initial proposal (of up to 5 pages):
  • The purpose of the experiment you would like to fly.
  • What data you would expect to collect.
  • How you would use the data collected.
  • How your experiment would advance space science or technology.


For full details visit the Space Experiment website: www.spaceexperiment.info

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Galileo opened to competitive bids

Monday, December 10. 2007
In the news

GIOVE-A under construction
Peter de Selding has reported today that Galileo has been opened up for competitive bids.

"European governments agreed to allow competitive biddings for the future Galileo satellite navigation constellation, clearing the way for Europe's two most successful small-satellite builders to make a joint bid against Europe's two biggest space-hardware builders." He went on to say "OHB Systems AG of Germany and Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) of Britain are free to bid on contracts to build Galileo spacecraft without having to prove they can construct the entire 26-satellite constellation."

The news is welcomed by SSTL and OHB who signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) indicating their willingness to bid together for such contracts.

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Team TopSat earns RAeS award

Tuesday, December 4. 2007
In the news

Last week at the Royal Aeronautical Society awards ceremony , the team responsible for the successful TopSat Earth observation mission, was awarded the Society's Silver Medal.


"Team TopSat" collect RAeS award
TopSat was developed for the MOD and BNSC by QinetiQ, SSTL, RAL and Infoterra and has been collecting tactical 3m imagery of the Earth for more than two years, setting a new world record for "resolution per mass of satellite". The engineering model is now on display in the Science Museum.

The award was accepted on behalf of the TopSat team by Dr Stuart Eves, the godfather of the programme, and Jenny Harding, SSTL's Projects Director who managed the programme.

This is the fourth Royal Aeronautical Society award won by SSTL staff this year. The team responsible for GIOVE-A received the Team Silver Award as well as the Geoffrey Pardoe Space Award, whilst Dr Mike Cutter was awarded the Society's Bronze Award for the design and manufacture of the CHRIS optical imaging system.

TopSat launched was launched in 2005. The small satellite's primary mission objective was to demonstrate that a microsatellite could deliver responsive high-resolution imagery directly from a satellite to ground terminals within the same footprint. Having fulfilled its original objectives, the satellite is now available for commercial service under the TopSat Consortium: QinetiQ (who own the satellite), SSTL, RAL and Infoterra, all original partners in the mission.

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