"I was born halfway through 1985, and this photo was taken at St Peter’s Hospital in Chertsey when I was just a few days old. My family stayed in Surrey, and I grew up attending schools in Woking and West Byfleet. At school, I struggled to narrow down my interests when it came to choosing GCSEs and A-Levels – I even remember picking subjects out of a fruit bowl when I couldn’t decide! In the end, I studied Physics, Maths, Geography, and Textiles at A-Level, and went on to earn a degree in Geography from the University of Portsmouth.
I graduated in 2006 and, in early 2007, got my first ‘real’ job (i.e., one that didn’t involve making coffee) at DMCii, then a subsidiary of SSTL. I was originally hired to help with the processing of imagery from the SSTL-built UK-DMC and other Disaster Monitoring Constellation partner satellites. I progressed quickly, and in the following years found myself coordinating the constellation to generate continental coverages for ESA projects as well as a variety of smaller, agricultural and disaster response contracts. By the time DMCii was merged into Airbus Intelligence, I was leading a team of imagery campaign managers.
During my last few years as part of Airbus, I was working as the Product Owner for the automated satellite data processing chain. Having spent many years involved in labour-intensive data collection and processing, it was exciting to apply that experience in a new, more technical direction.
In February 2024, I was offered the opportunity to take a secondment at SSTL, managing the Mission Services team. It’s been a challenging learning curve, but I’m thoroughly enjoying seeing a completely different side of the industry. I now support customers using and operating SSTL satellites – whereas before, I was one of those customers myself."
Thanks for sharing your journey, Hanna – from Surrey roots to satellite operations, it’s great to have you on the SSTL team.