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]

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]

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]

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]