Women and girls in science: the team helping to take us to Mars
ESA celebrates the International Day of Women and Girls in Science this 11 February, and highlights the story of the first all-female Systems Team in ESA’s Concurrent Design Facility, the place where ideas for new space missions, systems and structures take definite shape.
Meet the team behind the Mars Transit Habitat study that will be the backbone for sustainable roundtrips to Mars.
They work in the Concurrent Design Facility (CDF), a state-of-the-art facility at ESA’s ESTEC establishment in the Netherlands. Equipped with a network of computers, multimedia devices and software tools, teams of experts from several disciplines can apply the concurrent engineering method to the design of future space missions.
The CDF’s infrastructure and processes allow engineers and scientists with diverse multidisciplinary backgrounds to work in close coordination – pulling together competences, creativity and ideas. This approach means that solutions to design challenges can be shaped in a few weeks rather than months!
The CDF’s first all-female Systems Team is involved in the ‘MATHES’ study, standing for Mars Transit Habitat Environmental Control and Life Support Systems and Crew Habitation Systems.
In our interviews below, they share their insights on ESA’s CDF and concurrent design, and we discover all about the missions they’ve worked on (click on the links).
Ilaria Roma, Head of System & Concurrent Engineering Section
Claire Parfitt, Systems Team Leader
Beatriz Sánchez De La Villa, Systems Engineer
Tatjana Mandil, Assistant Systems Engineer
More about the International Day of Women and Girls in Science