‘I was brought up in Poulton-le-Fylde near Blackpool and was at secondary school there when SSTL formed. After that I went on to study Physics with Astrophysics at Birmingham University – I was the only girl on my course – and then continued to Leicester University for a PhD in X-ray Astronomy.
After finishing my PhD, I joined the space department at the Defence Research Agency (DRA), which became DERA and then QinetiQ. I spent 10 years there on a range of different space studies, and towards the end I was working on TopSat image processing, which had been built by SSTL. It was also at QinetiQ where I met my husband.
I joined SSTL in March 2007 as a systems engineer (or “the studies girl” as I was called back then) before being asked to team lead the newly formed Mission Concepts team. That gave me the unique opportunity to build a team from scratch. After a few years, I moved to be Systems Team Lead and eventually became the functional manager for Systems, AOCS and Thermal. I also got involved in the graduate programme and training delivery during my time at SSTL.
I left SSTL in September 2020, initially joining Prismatic as COO. After a year, though, I missed the space industry, so I joined KISPE. I’m now a system engineer there, but being in a small company means I get to wear many hats.. from technical system engineering to business development, bid work, and training development and delivery.
I’ve been interested in space ever since being given an encyclopaedia with a space section.. it was the only section I read! The picture of the life cycle of stars fascinated me, and when I was choosing undergraduate courses, it was always the ones with astrophysics content that captured my interest. I didn’t plan to join the space industry, but I was lucky that’s how things turned out. I love that the projects we work on end up in space and can have real-world value. Basically, working in space is cool. 😊
The biggest changes I’ve seen over my career are the growth of the industry – when I started it felt like quite a small club, and parents worried there wouldn’t be any jobs. Now it’s grown so much. I’ve also seen the rise in commercialisation, with things like the mega-constellations and SpaceX.. it’s evolving from a very government-funded model into a much more commercial industry.’
Thank you, Kathryn, it’s great to have you back in sharing your wealth of knowledge and experience with the next generation of engineers.