"There are two things you don’t want to be in the UK,” says Chris Lee, manager of the space division at SciSys. “One is an astronaut, the other is a rocket scientist.” Why? Because the UK has no astronaut programme and builds no rockets.

But do not despair, the latest figures from the British National Space Centre suggest that there are 15,700 people in the UK whose jobs can reasonably be described as “rocket science” — and they work at more than 200 companies. We might not build the rockets, but we have a thriving industry that produces the hardware and software for space missions, and a world-renowned scientific community leading the way in research and development.

For example, there’s the Venus Express spacecraft, which uses a Russian rocket and was due to launch yesterday, although this has now been postponed. One of the men who has worked on it is Dr Andrew Coates, head of planetary science at the University of London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory. He says that the excitement of working in planetary exploration is incredible. “To think that something that you’ve slaved over is working up there on celestial bodies like Venus or Saturn ... It’s a huge thrill,” he says.

But there is a downside. The hours can be long and the pay isn’t great — expect a salary of about £20,000 in your 20s, rising to £30,000 in your 30s, says Lee. And sometimes your work disappears without trace, as Coates found out when he helped to develop the cameras on the ill-fated Beagle 2 mission to Mars in 2003.

There are many ways into a career in the space industry. One is via academia, researching theory. Another is to take either a civil- or aerospace-engineering degree and move into industry, designing and making things. There is also the software side, which is arguably the most important element of space exploration, as it is the only part that can be changed after a launch.

However, software isn’t at the leading edge of technology. “People often comment that there’s more computing power in a washing machine,” says Lee. “But while it might be relatively sophisticated, it might also fail. You cannot allow space software to do that.”

One graduate working in space technology is Hazel McAndrews, 28, a PhD student at Mullard. She interprets data from the Cassini mission to Saturn. “When the data arrives, you're looking at something that no-one else has ever seen. You can make links and see processes,” she says. “We’re pushing the boundaries of human knowledge.”

www.bnsc.gov.uk
www.mssl.ucl.ac.uk

STEVE SMETHURST

• In last week’s article on “How do I become a facilities manager” (Career, Oct 20), we said that the chairman of the British Institute of Facilities Management, Mick Dalton, was director of operations at law firm White and Case. Dalton is no longer at White and Case; he is now marketing director of the GSH Group. We apologise for any confusion.

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