Profile

I started working on the ExoMars Rover a very long time ago, (2012) as a lead structure design engineer. That meant I was leading the team of design engineers to design the actual body of the rover. My team had people like computer modelling, strength analysis, materials and test specialists in it.

The rover takes a very long time (about 5 years) to go from a concept design, through a series of materials and smaller scale tests, to the first full build of the rover (which isn’t the one that goes to Mars, this first build is used for lots of different tests to make sure the whole thing works together as designed) and then the final (flight) build of the rover. In the concept design phase my team was just me and 4 other people, but in the test phase I was in charge of 25 people!

Now I’m moving onto a new rover mission – the sample return rover. I am  in charge of one of the major subsystems on this rover, the locomotion subsystem (all the mechanical bits that make the rover drive, like wheels, suspension, motors etc). This is going to be built by a Canadian company, so I am spending a lot of time working with them to agree how the parts from each of our companies will work and “co-engineer” our solution.

My coronavirus lockdown normal day is get up when my baby wakes up (6:30-7am), shower, negotiate with my husband on which meetings and telecons we each need to be uninterrupted for (i.e. when the other person has to be looking after our baby son) and then generally try to juggle working around looking after a toddler who is hell bent on injuring himself and can’t be left unsupervised for a moment! Fortunately my husband works with teams east of the UK, and I work with people in Canada and North America, so his meetings tend to be early morning UK time and mine later into the evening- so we do a kind of two shift working day. But we’re both very fortunate that we have jobs still and can work from home, so we are trying to remain as positive and grateful as possible that we are “STAYING HOME AND SAVING LIVES.”

Before this all kicked off, I would have said:

I don’t really have a typical day! Sometimes I travel to go and see the teams manufacturing parts of the rover for us, but when I’m in the office I get to work some time between 8 and 9, and normally deal with emails while I drink a mug of tea while my brain is kicking in (I’m not a morning person).

We have quite a lot of meetings to discuss and decide on different parts of the rover design, sometimes in person with the teams based in Airbus, and sometimes by videoconference with teams working in other companies or countries.

As I am in charge of my part of the rover design, (for the ExoMars Rover I was in charge of the structure, but now I am working on the sample fetch rover) the people in my team send me the test results or analysis they have worked on, and I have to decide what that means for our design, whether it is ok to go ahead with the current design or if their new information means we need to make changes. If we have to change things I communicate to my team what new work they need to do, and my ideas on how we could change the design to meet the new requirements, and then we will decide together which is the best solution.

I always try to have lunch with my friends either in the work canteen, or sometimes we walk into the town centre if it’s a nice day.

I spend time between meetings writing reports, looking at the results of tests or analysis that has been done, planning new tests or trying to think of different ways to solve any problems we’re having, and communicating to my team either by email or with a powerpoint presentation whether we need to change our design and if so how it needs to change because of the latest test information.

When I get the time I like to do outreach for schools or universities, and I sometimes even get asked to talk about my work in interviews for newspapers or on tv!