Profile

Hi! I’m an engineer who has spent time building parts for satellites, and then designed the whole satellites! My last job was with the European Space Agency’s technical facility in the Netherlands, ESTEC. There, I was working to create a satellite to fly in formation with another one and map the surface tomographically ( = in 3D). My role was a systems engineer – a sort of satellite architect who looks at the overall size, shape and capability of the satellite as a whole. I worked as just one part of a team of 40, even though it’s only a design on a computer and nothing has been made yet!!

But right now I am doing something a bit different – I’ve come to Antarctica where I have been living for the past 11 months on a floating ice shelf. Here, I am maintaining and installing experiments to monitor the upper atmosphere and space weather. Since I arrived, I have been through an Antarctic winter – 12 people, cut off from the outside world as no aircraft or ship can get to us for six months, for 105 days of which the sun doesn’t even get above the horizon. The temperature went down to below -50°C and the skies filled with the Aurora! It’s the summer here now, so there are more people (and some fresh food!) but I still have 4 months until a ship takes me home.

Being in Antarctica is mostly for the adventure of it, but this place is also important for astronauts. Because of the isolation, the difficulty of getting things here, the lack of a day-night cycle most of the year and the harsh environment outside, the Antarctic is often seen as a good “testing ground” for the mental and physical health of future long-duration astronauts. Living in a base here is probably as close a simulation as you can get on Earth to a cruise to Mars! As such, our doctor here is doing all kinds of experiments on us – the coolest of which is a Soyuz simulator with which we practice docking the space station! It’s pretty fun but it’s trying to answer an important question: would astronauts going to Mars or an asteroid be able to remember how to do the complex docking after many months of not doing much?

So ask me about satellites, space and Antarctica!

Some websites of interest:

My blog
Bitesized info about Antarctica
The British Antarctic Survey’s website, who I work for now
The European Space Agency, who I worked before before

If I were back in Europe, my day  would be:

Wake up, go for a run, have a small breakfast.
Go to work. Read a book on the bus.
Check emails, form day’s to-do list, start doing work
Lunch – very important past of the day for me!
More work stuff after lunch.
Go home.
Eat dinner, preferably with someone!
Play a game, do some household chores, read, whatever I want or need to do!
Sleep.

Here in Antarctica, surprisingly, this is mostly exactly the same! There are some small differences though:

My commute is from one side of the station to the other – about 200m – and so no need for a bus to get to and from work!
Occasionally we need to dig snow into a melt-tank to make water to drink and shower with.
If things break outside, I need to dress up warmly, hike out to the experiment in question, and fix it!
There is always company for dinner as we all eat together – no shortage of times to talk here…

Next summer when I am back home, a friend and I want to travel around the UK explaining why Antarctica is such an important place. We have a load of cool stories we want to tell about your experience here and things we want to show to anyone who is interested. Hardly anyone knows about the Antarctica-space connection so we want to change that… The UK Space Agency is also interested in this and is helping us make it happen!