Q&A: Space Crew to Space Industry

Space Crew

If you’ve ever visited us at the National Space Centre, then you will have met some of our Space Crew.

These are the friendly staff in red that greet you at the ticketing desk, guide you through our galleries, deliver our planetarium shows, and offer refreshments at our café.

Ever since we first opened in June 2001, our success is largely due to our dedicated Space Crew, and now we’d like to celebrate their success! Our Space Crew alumni have gone into some amazing careers around the world, including many in the space industry. We’re not ones to boast, but we’d like to think we gave them a head start.

We’ve caught up with two Space Crew alumni, Dr James Carpenter and Dr Leigh Fletcher, and asked them to share their advice about working in the space industry.

James Carpenter, ESA Project Scientist

James Carpenter started as Space Crew just as the National Space Centre opened in 2001. He went on to earn his PhD at the University of Leicester and now works at the European Space Agency (ESA) in the Netherlands as a Project Scientist on the Lunar Exploration Team. James would love to see upcoming robotic Moon missions pave the way for humans returning to the Moon to live and work.

What drew you to the Space Crew role and what did you enjoy most?

I was studying Physics with Space Science and Technology at the University of Leicester. I was excited that the National Space Centre was being built and to have the opportunity to get involved. I also needed a part time job to help pay my way and it beat my job working in a pub on Belvoir Street.

Favourite memory from your time as Space Crew?

The opening day. Everything was new and we’d been preparing for ages. It was great to finally present everything to the public. Everyone was incredibly excited and we were a tight team and very good friends.

Any skills that you learned that helped in your later career?

Meeting and talking to people from diverse backgrounds: from space professionals to Moon landing conspiracy theorists to children to elderly people who didn’t believe that space existed at all. The skills and experience I gained from that have been useful every day of my professional life.

If I told my 9-year-old self what my job is then he would have been mega-excited. I still feel like that.James Carpenter

What do you enjoy most about your current job at ESA?

If I told my 9-year-old self what my job is then he would have been mega-excited. I still feel like that. I love the people in my team. I love what we are trying to do and that what’s coming in the next decades in going to be amazing.

Advice for young people interested in working for ESA?

ESA needs people with all sorts of skills but the vast majority are engineers, although there are a number with other scientific and technical backgrounds. If working for ESA is a goal, then Engineering at a Masters degree level is normally a prerequisite. In all disciplines Masters or above is usually needed.

It’s worth pointing out that most of ESA’s work is performed through contracts with industry. While ESA defines the programmes and projects and directs the activities, most of the scientific and technical work is performed externally. Most European countries have substantive space industries. The UK is in fact a really exciting place to be at the moment with big aspirations for expansion of the sector to capture 10% of the global market, with around 100 thousand of new jobs expected before 2030.

You can follow James on Twitter at @jamesdcarpenter.

Image from James’ interview with the European Youth Media Days.

Leigh Fletcher, Planetary Scientist

Leigh Fletcher also joined Space Crew in 2001 and continued working at the National Space Centre during his holidays from undergraduate studies at the University of Cambridge. He earned his PhD in planetary physics at Oxford, then went on to work at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, focusing on Saturn and the Cassini mission. Now Leigh is an astronomer at the University of Leicester where he’s switched to Jupiter and the Juno mission.

What drew you to the Space Crew role and what did you enjoy most?

The chance to talk to people about a subject that I’m truly passionate about!  I’ve always loved space exploration, science fiction and the history of space travel, so having the opportunity to spend my days sharing that knowledge with the public seemed like the ideal job.  I soon started to provide school group tours during the day, and was trained as a planetarium presenter for guided tours of the night sky – running the planetarium was definitely one of the best things I did.

Favourite memory from your time as Space Crew?

Some great visitors to the space centre – Gerry Anderson, the creator of Thunderbirds, and Venetia Burney, the only person alive to have named a planet (Pluto, in 1930, when she was just 11 years old).

Any skills that you learned that helped in your later career?

Certainly the presentation skills and ability to communicate complex ideas to a general audience – I took this with me into my PhD and later academic jobs, and I became enthusiastically involved in outreach and education during my time at university.

What do you enjoy most about your current job at the University of Leicester?

I’m essentially getting paid to do my hobby, and I’m able to make discoveries and provide new insights into the nature of our solar system and our place in the universe.  It’s a wonderful feeling, to find something new, and I’m very lucky to have that opportunity.

Advice for aspiring astronomers?

Space exploration and scientific research today rely on computer science and mathematics – I wish I’d had formal training in computer coding and software development when I was at school, as I spend most of my life in front of a computer.  If you think research and exploration is in your future, on planet Earth or elsewhere, then computing, maths and physics will really give you a great head start.

You can follow Leigh on Twitter at @LeighFletcher.