Students get a taste for life as a space engineer

The students, all from local schools in Hertfordshire, attended the event held at Telespazio UK’s offices in Welwyn Garden City. The week commenced with a welcome from Telespazio UK CEO, Sarah Macken, followed by a series of seminars led by Telespazio UK engineers.

The students learnt about the fundamental components that enable any space mission. This set them up to work in competing teams to tackle a project brief and design a fleet of satellites to support a required service.

At the end of the week, the teams presented their solutions to a panel of judges, consisting of Simon Harwood, Leonardo’s UK Capability Development Director; Rebecca Irving, the UK Space Agency’s Telecoms Investment Lead; John Shirlaw, the European Space Agency’s Head of Flight Product Heritage; and Geoff Busswell, Telespazio UK’s Head of Marketing and Sales, who also chaired the judging panel.

During the week, the students engaged in space weather-related demonstrations and experienced how Virtual Reality (VR) can be used in space applications. These included using low-cost, hobbyist equipment to receive and decode data from a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite to produce a live weather image. Participants also heard from a Telespazio UK engineer currently working in the ESA James Webb Space Telescope team.

To give the students hands-on experience of space manufacturing, a midweek industry site visit to Stevenage to Airbus Defence and Space was arranged, where they explored the STEM engagement centre and Mars Rover yard. Having gained a further insight into what is involved in manufacturing satellites, the students later applied this knowledge to their projects to assist with justification of their design decisions.

The climax of the week was the teams presenting their solutions to the judges. All the teams impressed with their innovative ideas, with Team ‘Zeropyze’ judged to have the best solution. The presentations were followed by the award ceremony, during which Sarah Macken presented a trophy to each student and congratulated them on the tremendous effort they put into engaging with all the activities throughout the week.

The STEM event was devised by one of our graduates in the recently acquired e2E business, now an essential part of the Telespazio family, helping with building a pipeline of space engineers and experts.

Feedback from Telespazio UK employees, the judges and most importantly the students has been remarkable, with many participants expressing an interest in pursuing a career in the space industry.

One student said: “I am now more informed of the different roles in the space sector, so I have more options to consider (like defence and satcom). I now want to apply for a degree that has a space element. I had a great time on the ‘Week in the Life of a Space Engineer’ experience and feel like I've learnt a lot. I also felt very looked after throughout the week and felt that everyone was really helpful.”

Another commented: “I have picked up skills such as teamwork, learning from others and communication skills during the presentation. Delivering the presentation introduced new skills such as public speaking and delivering a compelling pitch. I think all these skills will be tremendously helpful in the future, as they will be needed for university, professional environments and other jobs in aerospace. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.”

Simon Harwood, Leonardo UK, said: “I was blown away by the levels of professionalism, confidence, and technical expertise these young people brought to the event. They were a credit to themselves and their schools. Some of the knowledge they displayed about the application of complex maths, physics and chemistry to mass, payloads, orbits and trajectory science was not something I studied until much later in life. To do this at A level was impressive, as was how they came together as teams to present to a potentially intimidating panel of senior leaders. Well done teams and well done Telespazio.”

Rebecca Irving, UKSA, said: “Telespazio did a great job putting together such a detailed and interesting event. The participating students had to absorb a great deal of complex information in a short space of time, devise an imaginative solution to the design brief and present it to a panel of judges from the space sector. They rose to the challenge magnificently and I cannot praise them enough!”

Chair of the judging panel, Geoff Busswell, added: “The talent, commitment and enthusiasm from the students during our STEM week was truly inspiring. We gave them a real-world problem to solve, which involved complex analysis and trade-offs. They had to learn many difficult new concepts on the fly and work together well as a team in forming their bold and innovative solutions, but also in presenting it to the judges. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and look forward to the next intake in 2025!”

Telespazio UK is renowned for the expertise of its engineers whose capabilities span Earth Observation and Geo Information, resilient PNT, Space Domain Awareness, satellite communication, and systems engineering and solutions. From this perspective, the wider Telespazio group understands the importance of not only having people with skills and knowledge to work on space systems, but also the dedication and enthusiasm to work in the sector.

As a company, and in collaboration with other industry partners, Telespazio UK is committed to inspiring young people into the space sector. There is ‘space’ for all!