Martin Halliwell is a Partner at NewSpace Capital, one of the world's first private equity firms devoted exclusively to growth-stage companies working in the space technology sector. He formerly served as Chief Technology Officer of SES, where he led global technology and R&D from 2011 to 2019. Halliwell contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices section.
For most of the space age, satellites have been puppets on a string. Every meaningful decision — where to point a camera, when to fire a thruster, how to route a signal — was made by engineers on the ground and radioed up on a schedule.
