On Wednesday 3rd April 2024, 20 World Traders and guests visited Surrey Satellite Technology [SSTL] for a presentation by Andrew Greenhalgh and SSTL’s Chairman and founder, Sir Martin Sweeting. It was a fun and invigorating presentation, and SSTL said after, “I can assure you they are rarely as congenial or interesting for us to host. You were a top-quality visiting party.”
SSTL were a client of mine over 20 years ago, and I was always fascinated by their small-scale satellites hitching a piggyback on much larger satellites and then being launched like Zebedee – for those too young to remember this refers to a children’s programme. More modern versions are launched in a similar way, but some now have small rockets to enable the satellites to be put in the correct orbit.
We were also given a tour, through the windowed passageway, of their clean room assembly area with lots of pictures of different photographs of earth from space.
9 of us took a train back to Waterloo and had a fantastic meal at La Barca restaurant nearby.
A great afternoon and evening.
