• Question: How on earth do you know what to spend your time doing and what to research and stuff? Do you have to come up with things by yourself, are you told what to do or do you were in groups?

    Asked by nessie to Anita, katiesparks, Melanie, Michael, Philip, Priyanka, Sam.S, Sandra, Steph, Tabby on 11 Jan 2018.
    • Photo: Katie Sparks

      Katie Sparks answered on 8 Jan 2018:

      Hello,

      I work for a company, but we work on science missions. We don’t decide what the missions are, we bid for them, usually from somewhere at the top of the “science community”.
      So few things to unpick:
      science community – for me, it’s ESA. They ask various science institutes (universities and the like) what they think will be the big topics in science. Those ideas are collated and groups will look at what things might be possible.
      Next up – from those ideas they decide to take further, they go to companies and ask for bids. A bid is that companies best idea of what the mission will look like: the satellite, what science it will do, which different companies and countries will work on it, how much it will cost and when it will be ready.
      After that – we get our hands on it and divide up the work to make sure that we can meet whatever we have said we will.
      In the first place – we consider what are similar missions, or parts of missions, and then come up with lots of ideas for the new thing; at which point computer modelling really starts to help us work out what might work and to start refining things.

      There’s a lot in there, so I think I’ll leave it there, but do ask more if there’s more I can help with.

      Katie

Comments

  • Photo: Tim.M

    Tim.M commented on :

    I research what I am both interested in and also what I am capable of doing. My training has sent me down a path and so i have a background but i can also train all the time to larn new stuff. This means I can widen my research area. There are limits and in the end, something that is not too risky but is exciting and new. These are the types of projects that can be funded. In the end its all about the money. I’d love to studty the fresh water crayfish and how it survives without much oxygen in the summer, but it seems only to be an interest to me and the world might not change once I discovered the answer. So no -one will give me the money to do the study. On the other hand, I also study blood vessles and the disease that can shorten life, so a lot of people are interested in that and would like to find out the answer. So there is money to research it. Heart disease, cancer, lung disease and so on. Find something that interests you and study it, become a world expert and it could be you whole career!

    Or make a space craft that takes 20 years to get to where its going, 10 years discovering something when its there and another 10 analysing the data. Theres a 40 year career on one subject!