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SET Women - Leicestershire Women in Science Engineering & Technology

e-Book - Elizabeth Seward - Senior Space Missions Systems Engineer

"With Physics you can immediately see the relevance of all of your hard work. That what appeals to me."

Liz says she always enjoyed and was good at Physics in school, and had a fantastic teacher, "which always helps," she adds. So when it came to picking a University course, Physics seemed the obvious choice. "But Physics on its own just seemed too boring," she laughs. "I learned that I could study Physics with Space Science, which seemed perfect as I'd been interested in space for years, and I found five universities offering it." She says that the events during the University of Leicester's Open Day were so much fun that she decided to apply to their four-year programme in Physics with Space Science & Technology.

"I had a fantastic time on the course. " Liz took advantage of summer opportunities home and abroad to expand her working experience in the field of space science. She went to Russia and California, and caught the space bug pretty hard. "I decided at the end of my degree that I didn't want to do a PhD. I wanted to be working in the space industry right away."

Liz was offered an interview for a graduate job with EADS Astrium, a European leader in space systems design. "I became a thermal engineer by accident," she recalls. "I phoned in to confirm the interview, and they referred to it as ‘the thermal position.' I had to cram thermodynamics overnight!" Nevertheless, Liz was given the position, but she eventually decided it was not the right one for her. "There was a lot of computer modelling and analysis, not really what I wanted to do. I wanted to work on planning space missions."

She was able to move to the mission systems group within the company to the team that works out how to achieve the missions proposed by the scientific community; this work comes through the European Space Agency. Liz explains, "We may work on the engineering problems of sending a spacecraft to Pluto, testing Einstein's Theory of Relativity, or launching larger and larger telescopes into orbit."

Currently, Liz is on the team that is working out strategies for controlling the formation flying of satellites in space. Instead of trying to launch one bulky scientific instrument package, current aims are to fly the unconnected pieces of it at the correct distances apart so that they still work together as one unit. The two projects she is working on are called XEUS and Darwin, both scheduled for launch by the European Space Agency in 2015.

"XEUS will be a set of two satellites flying 35 metres apart. Together they create a giant X-ray telescope that can reach the resolution scientists need to answer their questions about Dark Matter, massive black holes, and the nature of Dark Energy." On the other hand, Darwin will be looking for Earth-like planets around other stars and requires four satellites in perfect formation to do so. By perfect, Liz means down to nanometre accuracy, because those planets are hundreds of times smaller than their suns.

Liz doesn't consider herself an expert in any one field of space science engineering, because she says she needs to know about many different aspects of the field at once. "Our job in the mission systems group is to know how all the bits on a satellite work and how to design them, but only at the top level. When projects progress into the detailed design stages, we hand over the work to a large project team."

Another important part of the job is ensuring that the department is working on the right projects now to position themselves for future work. This involves talking to scientists and travelling to conferences to hear from others in their field. "Networking is very important, creating contacts for future work and catching up with old collegues. That's one of the most enjoyable parts of the job, and if you're lucky the conference will be somewhere hot or exotic!"

Learn more about Liz Seward's work:
EADS
XEUS
DARWIN