It’s always a treat when two worlds come together. As an Editor for EJR-Quartz, I work with the pioneering Earth Explorer mission managers to tell the stories of trailblazing ESA science on wind, ice, clouds and geomagnetism.
But once upon a time I was a biologist, and after my PhD my first job was on Norwich Research Park creating exciting events about DNA and big data biology. That meant my home became the East of England, so it seemed perfect when I was asked by Space East to join a panel on what Earth Observation means for the region on 10 September 2025.
The event was brilliant. It was held at the University of East Anglia’s Enterprise Centre, which has a nice feel to it, with all its chalet-like wooden features and space. There was a good hum of interest from people from various sectors, and a lot of interest in how space technology could help things like agriculture, energy, and coastline monitoring.
The East of England is surrounded by sea, full of wind farms, and is one of the most productive agricultural regions on Earth, so it’s no surprise that people are keen to know what Earth Observation can do here.
One very entertaining part of the day was that one of the first talks, given by Electra Panagoulia of the Satellite Applications Catapult, featured what was for me a very recognisable satellite in her title slide. It was EarthCARE, ESA’s cloud, aerosol and radiation explorer.
It was a perfect segue for me to launch into the panel discussion, in which I was able to recount our incredible Hakuryu experience for ESA – when with Jamie Perera we turned EarthCARE’s cloud and aerosol data into a dragon’s song of peace. We exhibited this at ESA’s Living Planet Symposium in Vienna, where it was a big success, and we plan to make it even bigger with events online and around the world. It was a perfect example of one of the key questions – how to make EO data more accessible.
Funnily enough, later in the day I chatted to another speaker, Krupa Nanda Kumar of Space4Climate, who had also done a lot of work on EarthCARE. We ended up sharing details and Space4Climate were able to promote Hakuryu the next week. So, the event was clearly a networking success!
The workshops in the afternoon were also very interesting, and it was wonderful to see just how many examples of crossovers there were between the attendees. The usefulness of ESA’s missions was clear, and it was a pleasure to discuss them with enthusiasm. The conversations could have gone on for hours, and many will continue afterwards.
I think this sort of event is very useful for introducing people to EO, and also to each other, and I look forward to attending similar events in the future.
