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I work in a lab, but there aren’t any white coats. In my lab you’ll find three computers, a box full of tools and an iPod dock. You’ll also find Steve and Sandra, who are robots.

Steve doesn’t look like you or I, but he has a very important job to do in the world of astronomy. In a couple of years, Steve will be on top of a telescope in the Canary Islands, taking care of the complicated task of moving one thousand optical fibres into *just* the right place to catch the light from individual stars in the sky. This has to be done so quickly and with such accuracy that humans would find it impossible. With Steve, astronomers will be able to precisely measure the electromagnetic spectrum coming from one thousand stars (or faraway galaxies) in just one hour. That’s more than 2 million every year!

This is Steve! What you can’t see is how he can place things to an accuracy of the width of a human blood cell!
So on a typical day I’ll be working on Steve’s control system, either hardware (computer networks and motor controllers) or writing code for his ‘brain’.

Don’t tell the astronomers, but Steve has two secret modes:

copying human handwriting, and
making gin and tonics.

(Sometimes the freedom to experiment goes a bit far.)

I love my work.  I’m allowed to work pretty much however I want, because it’s the results that matter. I have a boss, but I’m never told what to do. When you’re a scientist, there’s always something you know a lot more about than anyone else, and there is a mutual respect for that. You become an expert among other experts 🙂 You still have to work hard and you still have to meet deadlines, but your work is exactly that – yours!

Ask me about Steve if you like, or about Sandra the ‘spinebot’ or ‘Starbugs’!  Starbugs are my favourite past project 😀
This is ‘the office’:

This is a weather balloon just after launch (Image credit: flickr/superciliousness)

This is the view from a weather balloon on its way to the edge of space! (Image credit: flickr/jabella)
Did you know that the outer atmosphere of Earth, about 30 km up, is similar to the conditions on the surface of Mars? Did you know that large rubber balloons filled with helium can go there?

As a way to get school students thinking about what might be useful to take to Mars in the future, I’d fund a high-altitude balloon project to send a range of student-designed experiments right into the heart of our harsh stratosphere, where the air is thin, the (electromagnetic!) radiation is high and the temperature is low.  Just like on Mars 🙂

When the balloon bursts due to the low air pressure around it, it would be tracked on its fall back down to Earth, picked up, and the experiments would be returned to their creators. Oh and there’d be an awesome on-board movie of the whole thing.

Here’s an example of a similar balloon by a guy called Dave Akerman. Dave uses a cheap computer called a Raspberry Pi to track the balloon and also to take photos and videos from ‘the edge of space’.  My balloon would be similar, but with *your* experiments on board too.

I think this is a pretty neat idea, and you can help to make it a reality if you kindly give me your vote!

Also I’d be really interested to hear what YOU would send to Mars 😀