• Question: What's your favourite thing you've done at work?

    Asked by 251spcc35 to Rhys, Mike, Dan, Katie, Camilla on 15 Jun 2015. This question was also asked by 570spcc25, 932spcc35, 938spcc35, Klaudii, Ale, 352spcc35, Amy.M, Tevin, Mikki, Izzyxx, yasmine, Mini minion.
    • Photo: Katie Sparks

      Katie Sparks answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      Just before Easter, I got to go on test. The test was in Munich, because we need special equipment to test a whole spacecraft. The mission is called Lisa Pathfinder and the test was to see what temperatures it gets to in space. To do this, we put it in a special room and make it cold, really cold, -150 degrees C, 10 times closer than your freezer! When it is that cold, we can’t see the spacecraft, there are no windows, so we are looking for measurements on a computer screen. It was amazing to see all the temperatures changing and, when it got to certain temperatures, the heaters and computers on the spacecraft turning on.

    • Photo: Camilla Weiss

      Camilla Weiss answered on 16 Jun 2015:

      One of the projects I was working on was for two Russian satellites. We had built all the avionics – the computers, the attitude and orbit determination system (which we use to find out where the satellite is, where it needs to be and how to stop spinning!). I was on the commissioning team which is the team that looks after the satellite just after it has launched and does all the health checks to make sure it’s working before we hand it over to the customer. This meant I got to go to Moscow which is where the satellite was being controlled from which was a really exciting trip! I got to watch a satellite as it started sending down telemetry and as we started sending telecommands. There were a couple of little issues as we tried to get the two satellites into a safe mode and when we did it was really satisfying to hand over the satellites to the customer.

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