Most people working in the industry are scientists and engineers who have come through a university, but there are also opportunities for motivated young people who want to study and learn through an apprenticeship, or for people from other sectors who’d like to apply and adapt their skills to the specialisms of the space industry. And of course, every space business needs a plethora of supporting roles to be efficient and profitable.
Opportunities within the space industry include the obvious range of specialisations in (aero)space, electrical, electronic, mechanical, communications, IT and systems engineering, but also the application of physics and other sciences to the development of applications and services for people on Earth using information from satellites.
Building satellites and launching them successfully calls for the full range of engineering specialisations. The roles call for imaginative people who can be innovative, pay attention to detail and work well in international teams. Ensuring satellites and their instruments do the job, and keep doing what they’ve been designed to do, relies on robust software designed by electronics or systems engineers and computer scientists.
Engineers and scientists need to work together in multidisciplinary teams to design and build sensors and instruments to observe and monitor both the Earth and the space environment. Having an understanding of the natural world (or space) and being able to apply and communicate this knowledge is crucial to ensuring that instruments are developed which will benefit business, science and the global community for years to come.
Who uses satellite data? Everyone! But we need numerate and innovative scientists and entrepreneurs to come up with new ideas, and convert the data into useful information and services. Today we use it for communications and TV, for navigation and security, for exploring and monitoring our planet, predicting and defining risk, and mitigating disasters. What new ideas could you come up with?
