Q: Does that mean you are recruiting for more team members?
A: Yes, that's correct. We are recruiting for another product assurance engineer to help us with our projects, as well as another product assurance engineer with specialist knowledge in high reliability electronic components and software assurance. We need talented people who can make sure that the parts that are picked by the wider design team meet the quality requirements that the customer is demanding.
Q: Why is your department so crucial to the production process?
A: Our team is very much at the start of everything Teledyne Space Imaging does. In the space environment, it's not so straightforward to replace something if it doesn't quite work. If something goes wrong with a device in space, we can't just ‘nip up’ and change it.
My team are involved right at the beginning, in the initial design stages. Once Teledyne Space Imaging has designed the device and we are confident that it will meet customer requirements, it could be ten to 20 years before that device is actually up in space working. It is vital, therefore, that product assurance is involved in the design right from the start. We can help make sure that any new design work centres around helping the device stay functional and relevant many years from now. We keep the customer in touch with our progress to manage their expectations and make sure that any changes and tweaks they ask for along the way still meet our quality standards.
Q: Are you working with customers globally?
A: We work a lot with the European Space Agency (ESA) who are an important end-user for our products. However, we have also been working with commercial customers recently. These types of customers are often slightly more willing to take risks and invest in more than one type of product instead of putting up just one device or one satellite. They tend to be happier sending up a constellation of five or ten satellites at once and to invest in cutting edge technology to get the job done.
It all depends on the type of mission we are designing for. If a commercial customer wants to look for things out in space that nobody is really sure whether they are there or not, that can be very exciting. When a customer asks us to design something like that, it can be both challenging and very rewarding.
Q: Do you think that these commercial customers represent the future of the new space economy?
A: To my knowledge, nobody within the space industry has actually defined what the new space economy actually is. Every company currently operating in the global space sector is constrained with how much they can explore it by money and tight budgets. We are having lots of conversations right now to try and work out what everyone needs to push forward into the new space economy. Some of our commercial customers want a single device and to know that it will work. Others have wider briefs to follow. We work on an individual basis with each customer to try and support them in their plans. We will use our expertise wherever possible to make something, test it and make sure that it works.
Q: Teledyne Space Imaging continues to grow?
A: Thanks to our strong reputation for excellence in the space sector, we are growing steadily as a business. We are developing our services to keep pace. Customers are beginning to realise that we are the best people to work out what electronics they need to run their devices. So, whereas we used to only create and deliver imaging sensors, we are now designing the electronics and testing equipment that our customers need to actually to run their devices. This has been a big change for us over the past five years or so. While it is mainly Teledyne e2v Space Imaging that makes the products my team works on, we work with all of the smaller businesses that fall under the main Teledyne brand.
Q: What do you like most about working in the space industry?
A: I’ve always loved Star Trek, both the movies and the TV series. I can remember watching them with my parents on a Saturday night as a child and that piqued my interest in the space sector as a whole. I love how the space industry is constantly changing as we discover new things and trying new ways of working. A lot of the projects we are working on now are looking at the environment and developing ways to protect it through monitoring projects and Earth observation. Teledyne Space Imaging is contributing towards several large-scale environmental projects that are doing valuable work in this area.
Q: How much of your work is in Earth Observation?
A: In Europe, we are on 95% of the Earth Observation fleet. It is incredibly satisfying to know that we are playing even just a small part in helping to protect the world. To work towards stopping climate-related disasters such as floods or forest fires. Space is becoming more and more important to us in that regard. The world has changed so much, even since I was at school. You only have to look at how many cars there are on the roads nowadays, compared to even a few years ago. It’s the same with aircraft.
As our population increases, so does the impact we are having on our climate and the environment. While we will probably not see things like moon settlements during my lifetime, we need to look beyond our planet’s boundaries to help us deal with issues such as the current population boom.
Q: How has the Teledyne Space Imaging team evolved over the last few years?
A: We have grown in numbers a lot. Not just at our UK site, but overseas as well. This has helped us diversify new areas of delivery. At the same time, I've noticed that this growth has helped us develop from a small company that was somewhat regimented in the way we did things into a more dynamic, versatile organisation that is ready and eager to embrace change and innovation. We are working at a much faster pace now. We are seeing more and more women work for us too. In my team alone, we are roughly at a ratio of half and half when it comes to male and female employees. That is something of which I am very proud.
Q: What else are you proud of in your role at Teledyne Space Imaging?
A: For me, my proudest moments have all been connected to the missions and projects that I have worked on. I am proud of the way in which we have managed to modify and evolve our approach to assurance so that it can keep up with what our customers need. I have built a team of people who say, ‘yes, we can do this for you,’ rather than feel limited by unnecessary constraints. We are dynamic and excited about what’s going to happen next for everyone at Teledyne Space Imaging.
