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

    Asked by syri to Katie, Rhys on 15 Jun 2015. This question was also asked by 374spcc29.
    • Photo: Katie Sparks

      Katie Sparks answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      Hi Syri,

      My most challenging project is probably the one I’m on right now. It’s a new mission called PLATO:
      http://sci.esa.int/plato/
      We’re looking to see if it is actually possible to do the science – so it’s a long way from being built yet (at least 10 years!) PLATO will look for Earth-like planets around other stars. To do this, it takes lots of pictures from different telescopes and compares them, to see if a planet has moved in front of a star. That means that all the telescopes have to be pointed really accurately at the same place. The main challenge is: the spacecraft wobbles! My job is to reduce the wobbling due to changes of temperature. It’s something we’ve never done before and there are a lot of results – so checking that everything is working is hard because there is so much to look through!
      Also – there are many things that change the temperature of the spacecraft, so working out where to start is big challenge – hint: we’re testing one thing at a time.

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