ESERO Space Goes To School

Danielle works as a Resident Astronomer and Telescope Operator at Blackrock Castle Observatory in Cork, Ireland, and Coordinator of Space Week Ireland. Danielle didn't originally go to school for astronomy or science; she actually has a degree in Spanish and studied several languages. Danielle found astronomy later in life.Danielle is passionate about space and one of the main goals of her work is to communicate space, science, and astronomy to students and the public. She organizes many outreach programs throughout the year to make space accessible to as many people as possible.Her favorite part of her job, however, is getting to use the telescope at the observatory. It's a 16" Schmidt Cassegrain Meade LX200R. Danielle works alongside the on-site Astrophysicist gathering images. The research that's done is mainly on blackholes and exoplanets but they also image other target in space to use as educational resources for schools.

In addition to being a Radio Presenter and DJ for the radio station Midlands 103, Seanie is a well-known amateur astronomer and has been an astronomy lecturer for many years.

Juan has worked in space programmes at the European Space Agency (ESA) for 27 years. He has recently retired from ESA but remains passionate about space and likes talking about its contributions to society. He enjoys explaining space and the underlying Physics to young students and interested public.
Juan is Spanish, has a Masters in Industrial Engineering by the Polytechnical University of Barcelona, a Masters in Astronomy and Astrophysics, by the Valencian International University and has worked in Germany and The Netherlands. His wife Gabrielle is Irish and they spend now a lot of time in Co. Louth.

Dr Thiemann completed a PhD at the Open University studying binary stars and how stars form, evolve, and change in brightness. Heidi has access to and works with telescopes like Super WASP, Faulkes Telescope, ASAS-SN, and the South African Astronomical Observatory. She now runs a company called the Space Skills Alliance, helping other companies in the space industry to have the right skills.

Eóin Tuohy is from Kilmacanogue in Co. Wicklow and works in research for human spaceflight. Eóin was working for the European Space Agency at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany. During this time he worked with the Spaceship EAC team studying lunar dust and developing a new device for scanning the eye which is now on the International Space Station. He also worked with the Space Medicine team working with medical devices for spaceflight. Eoin took the skills he learnt during this time and is now the director of EiroSpás Limited, which does space research for ESA.

Hans Huybrighs is a planetary scientist at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. He studies Jupiter's moons Europa and Io and works on the Jupiter ICy moon Explorer (JUICE) that launched last April.
He worked previously at the European Space Agency and research institutes in Germany, Sweden and the United Arab Emirates.

Aoife Murphy is a Mechanical Engineer and MSc in Space Science & Technology 2023 Graduate. In 2018, she took part in ESA Academy’s Guide to Spacecraft Operations Training Course in ESEC-Galaxia in Belgium. She has also completed two programmes with the International Space University (ISU) including the first ever online Interactive Space Program (ISP) in 2020, and the Space Studies Program 2022 in Lisbon, Portugal. Aoife would like to share how she became passionate about space, her journey so far, and some of the exciting things that she has gotten to do along the way.

Aisling’s role at ESA is to ensure that the spacecraft gets to where it needs to go without breaking! The launch of a spacecraft is very tough from a mechanical perspective, lots of shaking and noise and some loud bangs! These shocks and vibrations are the main drivers for the mechanical design of the spacecraft. It is my responsibility to ensure that every part of the spacecraft is going to be able to survive the launch. A lot of analyses are performed to confirm this before we ever build anything.Primary- Aisling will talk about her experience as an engineer at ESA and she would love to for students to show her their enthusiasm about space by showing off their own space projects!