Pat Norris, the author of Spies In The Sky, regularly lectures on the subject of spy satellites, their impact on the Cold War and their relevance in today's conflict-ridden world - and on a variety of other space and software topics.  Next public lecture: 23rd March 2012 at the "After Longitude - modern navigation in context" conference in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.

Many hundreds of people enjoyed lectures in the past few years by Pat Norris on the subjects covered in Spies in the Sky including  

  • July 20th 2007 at the AMSAT UK annual conference, University of Surrey
  • September 27th 2007 at the IAC in Hyderabad (paper no. IAC-07-E4.2.05)
  • February 13th 2008 at the Headquarters of the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS), London
  • March 29th 2008 at the UK Space conference in Godalming, Surrey
  • April 7th 2008 at ESTEC, the technology centre of the European Space Agency (ESA), in Noordwijk, The Netherlands
  • May 29th 2008 at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Oxfordshire
  • June 11th 2008 at ESOC, the operations centre of ESA, in Darmstadt, Germany
  • September 11th 2008 at the headquarters of ESA in Paris
  • December 10th 2008 at the Chester (UK) Branch of the RAeS
  • April 2nd & 14th 2009 at the RAeS Boscombe Down and Cambridge Branches
  • May 21st 2009 at the RAeS Wolverhampton / Cosford Branch
  • December 8th 2010 at the RAeS Highland Branch
  • To find out more about RAeS Branch events, please contact the Branch using the details provided at RAeS Branches
  • The lectures are tailored for each audience, but do not depart far from the February 13th 2008 lecture, a write-up of which can be found at RAeS lecture - Spy Satellites in the Cold War.

Pat has also given many lectures on the subjects covered in his 2010 book Watching Earth from Space including:

  • November 30th 2010 at the IET in London
  • June 4th 2011 at the annual Chinese/Soviet Forum of the British Interplanetary Society in London
  • July 31st 2011 at the AMSAT UK annual conference at U. Surrey
  • November 9th 2011 at the RAeS Gatwick Branch

In other speaking duties, Pat  gave a lecture on "The Space Race" on 8 December 2009 at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London,  part of the Gallery's series of lectures on the history of the late 1950s and 1960s.  Further information on the Gallery's activities can be found on their website: Dulwich Picture Gallery

Pat has written and presented extensively about his experience in the Apollo moon landing missions.   On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the first moon landing New Scientist published a feature article by him about the challenges of navigating to the moon (Apollo Navigation).  He appeared on the UK Channel 4 TV programme that also celebrated that 25th anniversary and has written and been written about in newspapers and magazines in the years since then.  His next lecture on this topic will be at the "home of longitude", the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich (near London) on March 23rd 2012 where he will describe how the errors in longitude of NASA's tracking stations caused severe problems for the Apollo 8 mission.

Another topic covered by Pat is the Huygens probe that landed on Saturn's moon Titan.  He lectured on that subject on 9th September 2009 at the Bedford (UK) Branch of the RAeS.

Watch this space for future speaking dates.