Dr Martin Collins, a curator in the Space History Division at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, will be the featured speaker at the AMSAT-NA Symposium banquet on Saturday, October 10, at the Four Points Sheraton Hotel at Baltimore-Washington International Airport. The title of his presentation will be Making the Space Age: The First 50 Years.

Dr Collins curates the National Air and Space Museum's civilian applications satellites collection that includes weather, remote sensing and communications satellites and related technologies. He has contributed to a series of Museum exhibits and was primary author of the exhibition catalog Space Race: The US-USSR Competition to Reach the Moon.

On the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of Sputnik, he was editor of the book After Sputnik: 50 Years of the Space Age that included pages and photos on the history of Project OSCAR. He was instrumental in arranging the display of OSCAR 1 at the National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center, along with the Naval Academy's PCSat Amateur Radio satellite. He also arranged the acquisition of AMSAT's MicroSat mechanical test model that went on display in 2004, just in time for AMSAT's 35th Anniversary Annual Meeting.

The Saturday evening banquet is one of the highlights of AMSAT's 40th anniversary symposium, October 9-11.