• Question: what is the most challenging project you have done

    Asked by engy to Camilla, Dan, Katie, Mike, Rhys on 15 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Katie Sparks

      Katie Sparks answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      I have found every project challenging! But all for different reasons.
      For EarthCARE the hardest thing was working out when the spacecraft was getting the most sunlight, it’s orbiting the Earth really fast (every 90mins, so 16 times a day).
      For Solar Orbiter it’s going to be rally close to the Sun and also quite far away from the Sun at different points of it’s orbit, it’s hard to make sure it’s not getting too cold when it is a long way for the Sun.
      For Lisa Pathfinder, I was learning so much new stuff, like how to manufacture things, so still lots of new things.
      For PLATO the process was being developed at same time as we’re trying to get the results out, all very quick moving.

      In short, they’re all challenging, but that’s also what makes them so interesting.

    • Photo: Camilla Weiss

      Camilla Weiss answered on 16 Jun 2015:

      Two of the projects I’m working on at the moment are both challening for different reasons.
      DMC3 – a constellation of very high resolution imagers (1m resolution) has been quite challenging because the imagers we’re building are so complex. The components inside, like the mirrors, need to be accurate to nanometers – that’s a billionth of a meter! And we need to get this safely into space on the top of a giant rocket whilst it shakes around without damaging those components, so that’s an interesting challenge.
      Formosat – This has been challenging for less technical reasons. Formosat is a constellation of 6 satellites used to research the weather and we had a very short time scale to build them all so the challenge here was being able to get everything built in time! Normally we have 2 of everything on satellite, one primary unit and one redundant, so this time we needed to get 6 of everything designed, built and tested in a very short amount of time.

    • Photo: Rhys Archer

      Rhys Archer answered on 16 Jun 2015:

      My current PhD project is really challenging, I am working with materials that although I have studied before, I have never used or tested, therefore it takes a lot of looking at what work others have done before to find the best way to test my materials which means a lot of reading and a lot of trial and error! It’s really satisfying though, as the more challenging something is, the more you learn and I find that I am learning new things every day!

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