• Question: what is your favourite thing you have worked on?

    Asked by spacerocks25 to Xu, Leah-Nani, Kathryn, Ian, Hina, Andrew on 8 Jun 2018. This question was also asked by qionex.
    • Photo: Andrew Margetts-Kelly

      Andrew Margetts-Kelly answered on 8 Jun 2018:

      I think my favourite thing I’ve worked on is when I was part of a team designing a new Star Tracker. Apart from the technical challenges that needed to be worked on we had a lot of fun too.

      Making something so sophisticated was a massive achievement. It was a very rewarding feeling when last year the first one went into space and worked perfectly from the second it was turned on.

      Because it was a very complicated thing to design, build and test we spent years working very closely together. We all became very good friends. Even though most of my old team now live in different countries all over the world I still visit them regularly and stay with them for holidays. We made lifelong friendships; this is why it was my favourite.

    • Photo: Kathryn Burrows

      Kathryn Burrows answered on 11 Jun 2018:

      It’s quite hard to pick but as I always like to look forward I would have to say the current work I am doing with the Cesium fountain clock. I like thinking about the interaction of tiny atoms and laser light.

    • Photo: Ian Jones

      Ian Jones answered on 11 Jun 2018:

      Getting Goonhilly going has been really interesting. It’s taken a long time (nearly 10 years) and I’ve learned many things along the way about developing a business, working with universities, lobbying politicians, employing people… but underlying everything has been the engineering knowledge that has allowed me to turn engineering into a business.

      I find that really challenging, exciting and interesting.

    • Photo: Leah-Nani Alconcel

      Leah-Nani Alconcel answered on 11 Jun 2018:

      Designing commands for the Cassini spacecraft. It was always amazing to be able to control a spacecraft that was over a billion kilometres away at Saturn!

Comments

  • Photo: Sufia

    Sufia commented on :

    My favourite thing I’ve worked on is when we design a neonatal cot bed for babies in developing countries so premature babies had a better chance of surviving. It was challenging but we realised we could create a very cheap cot that was going to work just as effective as cots in the UK.