Holly Whitehouse

I'm Holly Whitehouse, so I'm currently on the south coast of England near Portsmouth and I'm an aerospace engineer.

So as an aerospace engineer, most of my time is spent evaluating different structures for spacecraft.

My company works primarily in the space industry. So my work there is involved in modeling how these spacecraft are going to re-enter the atmosphere.

For example, if we're looking at a mission to Mars, how would the spacecraft get from the orbit around Mars to the ground?

So most of my work there is looking at what are the forces we need to think about that the capsule that contains a spacecraft will experience as it transports a spacecraft to the ground.

So that's the majority of my work, doing those modeling activities and then also looking at any experimental data, so testing that's done on different materials and different designs for this capsule and spacecraft. So that is what most of the time I do at work.

So a typical day where I work can vary day to day depending on sort of what stage in a project we're at. But I say most of my time is doing that modelling work.

So we use different types of models. One in particular looking at how liquids and gases interact with the materials and spacecraft we're looking at and running those models and seeing how they compare to experiments that are done and then writing that up and presenting our results to the customers that we work with.

So within my company that I work for, we're quite a small team. There's about 30 of us, which means we do get opportunity to collaborate a lot on the projects we do.

So that often will be one or two engineers doing the modeling activities and then another engineer managing the project.

And then outside of our company, we also do collaborate with other organisations. So for example, universities, space agencies. So in the UK here, the UK Space Agency, and in Europe, the European Space Agency, and NASA as well. We do collaborate with them on projects.

So we might be doing the modeling tasks, looking at the spacecraft materials and the forces we expect from the spacecraft, while they're doing testing, experimental tests, and then we can cross-compare the results from those experiments to our models and see how accurate they are.

Oh, it's hard to pin down one thing, but I think in my role as an engineer, when we complete our projects, we often get a chance to go out and travel to different sites. So looking at testing that is actually happening or presenting our results to people at conferences.

So the opportunity to travel, I've had a few times to various places in Europe, so that's a great part of the work, I'd say.

Again, I think hard to pin down but I think off the top of my head when running these models we often have to problem solve in setting them up. And if the models aren't working correctly, you're not giving us the results we're looking for.

So that's probably a difficult aspect of the role, trying to figure out where the problem is and finding a solution for that, which is an interesting challenge but it can be difficult depending on the project.

So I'd always been interested in engineering from when I was at school and then I pursued it at university degree.

So I studied aeronautical engineering at university and from there I decided to go well... I'm really interested in space. I want to pursue a career in the space industry so I want to be an aerospace engineer because in engineering there are several fields, aerospace being one of them.

So from there, as well as studying engineering at university, I tried to gain skills and knowledge in other ways. So taking part in extracurricular activities, my university space society. So designing rockets and high altitude balloons, which are balloons that we launch up to the edge of the atmosphere. And we can get some good video footage from that, which is really cool.

Also doing internships and things. So my internship wasn't in aerospace engineering but I still learned a lot from my experience in the engineering firm and another industry that I could tap into when looking for a job.

So from there, in my final year of university, I took several job applications. It's quite competitive industry space, so you have to quite a lot of different jobs but fortunately landed with one that's really interesting and is a great place to work.

So starting from when I was in school, I'd say subjects like maths and physics and chemistry as well were really relevant and sort of gave me the basis for what I did learn at university and what I use in my job now.

So those are the three subjects definitely to sort of if you're wanting to pursue engineering I'd really focus on. Not that you shouldn't focus on all your subjects at school, but those three in particular are relevant to engineering.

And then moving on to university. So my education there was very theoretical. We also have parts of the course that were looking at laboratories and doing more practical tasks. Things like programming and coding and also starting to use these sort of modeling tools that I now use in my job or modeling tools that are similar.

So although I don't always apply the theoretical knowledge I've learnt at university and in, for example, A-level and GCSEs, sort of the skills that you pick up in learning those subjects, in learning those practical skills related to engineering, those are really helpful and give you the ability to pick up new tools quickly and problem solving in general, which is a very important skill that an engineer needs.

Again, space industry, I think when people think of space industry, they can't really directly see the benefits of it to, I'd say, people in general.

But in my role, I've seen a lot of how the technologies that come from the space industry can then be taken further down the line to benefit lots of different industries and lots of different people.

So, for example, part of the work my company does is looking at when satellites orbit the Earth, they need to come back down to Earth after a certain period of time when they're retired. So for this, we need to make sure that the satellite burns up in the atmosphere before it reaches the ground, because that would be a danger to people.

So part of the work that my company does is do modeling tasks looking at whether these satellites will burn up completely or if there will be parts of the satellite that could be a danger to people on the ground.

So it's nice to be able to see how what we use in the space industry can be beneficial across, not just in terms of the exploration aspect, but also helping people and making sure they're safe as well.

Again, I keep saying it's hard to pin down, my jobs are so interesting and I personally really love it. So it's hard to pick one thing.

But again, related to the travel aspect, a couple of years ago, I got the opportunity to go to the technical site that the European Space Agency are based at. So I was there to do presentation on some work we've done for them.

However, as part of our trip there, we got an opportunity to tour the facilities and at the technical site the European Space Agency have, they have a lot of old spacecraft and components on display.

And one of the things on display was some old panels from the Hubble Space Telescope. So it was really cool to be able to look at these in really close up and see where they'd worn a bit and damaged and it's just sort of mind-blowing to see this thing that had been in space and now was on display for me to look at about half a meter away.

So yeah, I think that that was a highlight moment for me.

I talked a lot about my education path and doing the extracurriculars. However, the route to getting into where I am now didn't turn out exactly as I thought it would in terms of the step-by-step process of getting from going to school to getting where I am now as an engineer.

I sort of had a plan in place about how I'd do it but that plan hasn't really been followed because things happen in life that you have to account for.

So I think my advice would be to seek out any job opportunity you can and you never know how that's going to pan out down the line to help you where you want to go.

And don't feel like just because something's gone wrong in your goal or your plan to reach where you want to be career-wise that that's the end of the road. There are other paths you can take to reach where you want to go.