Celebrating the 2022 Winners of SEOTY and STOTY

Welcome to our May Edition of Via Satellite where we celebrate our recent winners of the Satellite Executive of the Year (SEOTY) and Satellite Technology of the Year (STOTY) awards. Our cover story is an interview with SEOTY winner, Melanie Stricklan, the inspirational CEO of Slingshot Aerospace. Stricklan’s story is such an interesting one, growing up in Eldorado, Texas, serving in the U.S. military, and then co-founding Slingshot Aerospace. It is a fascinating story, and a remarkable one in many ways, given how young a company that Slingshot is. Stricklan is such a deserving winner of SEOTY, and shows yet again just diversified the award has become.

We know Apple is a household name, but if someone had said a year ago, they would win a satellite-based award, it would have been hard to believe. However, its emergency SOS via satellite application is already saving lives and pioneering new ways of dealing with emergencies and life-threatening situations. In a big exclusive, we talk to Michael Trela, senior director of the Satellite Connectivity Group within Apple about Apple’s view of satellite and the impact of emergency messaging via satellite.

We are coming off a hugely successful and productive SATELLITE show. There was a great energy at the show. It is almost impossible to cover every major talking point, however our good friends at NSR, an Analysys Mason company, have written a story where they give us their 10 major learnings from the show.

We are gearing up for our next major event – CyberLEO in Los Angeles in May. We have some great speakers lined up from the likes of DARPA, the U.S. Space Force, Department of Homeland Security, Amazon, E-Space, and Telesat among others. We hope you can join us there as we delve into cybersecurity and LEO constellations, in one of the most thought-provoking events on the satellite calendar.