Who We Are

After leaving Oxford in 1993 with an MA in Physics, Doug joined the Defence Research Agency (now QinetiQ) to work on all things space, including radar surveillance, space radiation, spacecraft dynamics and military communications systems.

In 2001, Doug moved to Surrey Satellites to become a spacecraft systems engineer. Over the following years, he developed several new spacecraft including Europe’s first Galileo demonstrator satellite, GIOVE-A; ran the Science and Exploration business unit; and delivered multiple satellites and optical imaging payloads including the UK’s first cubesat.

In 2015, Doug created In-Space Missions, a company founded to develop new space enabled services and offer expert consultancy to industry, academia and government. Since 2015, Doug has variously run the UK’s rocket programme; led the technical development of a disruptive innovation centre; developed a commercial demonstration platform for space; and initiated a company delivering real time video and immersive experiences from space. Doug also sits on a number of industry advisory boards and takes an active interest in STEAM outreach.

Tony is the CTO of In-Space Missions Limited, bringing more than 28 years of experience in the space industry working for several major spacecraft manufacturers and ground system providers. Tony provides support and governance to project delivery as well as devising and driving forwards many novel service and technology offerings & capabilities.

Prior to joining In-Space, Tony was the Engineering Director at SSTL responsible for all spacecraft and ground segment engineering on project delivery and R&D.

Tony started his career in systems and AOCS engineering and has taken every opportunity to expand his capabilities in technologies across avionics, operations, software and ground segments, and in missions and payloads including Earth Observation, Science, Telecommunications and Navigation. His experience ranges across institutional, experimental and commercial missions, and has included two patents and a NASA Group Achievement Award.

Tony sits on the STEM ESERO-UK steering board and is active in the strategy for growing the Hampshire and M3 LEP region.

Ed is the Director of Space Systems at In-Space. He is a highly experienced spacecraft system engineer with a background in design, build and launch processing of many small satellite missions over 20 years.

Prior to joining In-Space, Ed had most recently been the Head of Mission Solutions and Innovation at Surrey Satellites where he managed the R&D activities of the World’s leading small satellite developer.

Ed started his career in RF and AIT and has worked on, led and managed every part of the satellite design, development, build, test and launch chain.

Kathryn is the Delivery and Operations Director at In-Space. She also leads their entrepreneurial joint venture, Spacetime Enterprises, working to provide virtual astronaut experiences. She has held various technical and delivery leadership positions within the Space and Cyber Security domains across Bae Systems Applied Intelligence, Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd and other divisions of what is now Airbus Space.

Kathryn holds a PhD in Astrodynamics, an MSc in Spacecraft Engineering, and graduated from the University of Cambridge (King’s College) with an MA in Astrophysics, where she worked on the University Women’s Executive. She is passionate about gender equality and equity, particularly in relation to STEM activities and tries to instil this passion in her young daughter with varying degrees of success.

Sarah is the Finance Director at In-Space. Sarah has worked in the space industry for over 20 years and has held the positions of both Finance and Managing Director of Surrey Satellite Technology. Her experiences have equipped her with the skills and insight required to navigate pitfalls and capitalise on opportunities pertaining to business growth in the international business environment.

A Fellow of Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, Sarah has deep financial monitoring expertise with a solid understanding of governance and controls required to ensure financial strength and business performance. She also has extensive experience of enabling disruptive innovation in heavily regulated technology environments. In addition to her role at In-Space Sarah holds a number of Non-Executive Directorships

Melanie Clift is Head of Sales and Business Development at In-Space Missions Ltd and has a wealth of experience gained in the up and downstream space industry having worked at ICEYE, Airbus Intelligence and Surrey Space Centre over the last 8-9 years.

Before joining the space sector, Melanie spent a decade in roles spanning M&A, procurement, supply chain management and strategy for Royal and Sun Alliance and Shell where she initially started as a graduate entrant in 2001.

Shefali is a Principal Business Development and Strategy Consultant at In-Space. Prior to this, she worked as a senior commercial strategist at a venture-capital backed, early stage space technology business, Oxford Space Systems (OSS). At OSS, Shefali successfully built strategies to secure new customers, yielding strong revenue growth. She led, managed & won some of the company’s largest bids including UK MoD, UK Space Agency & international commercial customers.

Shefali was also seconded by the UK government to India on behalf of the UK space industry to help assess the scope and scale of market opportunities for UK space companies to export to India.

Shefali holds an MSc in Astronautics & Space Engineering and BSc in Aircraft Engineering. She is also a member of the Innovation Sub-group at Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership and advices on developing the strategy for Oxfordshire’s innovation activities. Shefali actively supports STEM activities and is a member of the ESERO-UK steering committee.

Having spent much of her career working in account management, Jessica moved to the space and defence industry in 2010 when she joined Thorn SDS as PA to the M/D. Over the next eight years she took on the role of HR Manager working to support the team in providing contracting services to customers including QinetiQ, ESA and EUMETSAT. Jessica joined In-Space Missions in February 2020 as the Office Manager.

Nimal is a Principal Space Systems Engineer at In-Space. He joined in 2018 having been the Earth Observation Systems Engineer at Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL), responsible for developing and maintaining the technical strategy and roadmap for his business area.

Prior to this, Nimal worked as a mission systems and concepts engineer at SSTL across a variety of activities including the Remove Debris and Carbonite-1 missions. He also led technical studies examining technology trends, novel mission/payload concepts and economic considerations of satellite imagery. He has hands-on experience of nanosatellite assembly, build and test and of launch site integration. He also previously worked as a technician supporting the development and test of space mission components.

Nimal holds Bachelors and Masters degrees from the York University in Toronto and completed a Space Studies Programme with the International Space University.

Andres is a Senior Avionics Engineer at In-Space. Having completed his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Electronic Engineering and Computing in Bogota, Colombia Andres pursued his passion for developing new electronics systems with roles across a number of domains including IoT video processing devices; Augmented Reality systems and protection products for Hazardous areas.

After pursuing academic study into space systems part-time, Andres joined In-Space to gain more hands-on experience in Space hardware design and build. He has led the design of key systems on the Faraday spacecraft and can usually be found at his prototype bench or in the In-Space lab.

Susan is a Principal Engineer and Head of Outreach for In-Space. She has over 20 years’ experience of working in the Space industry in a variety of roles ranging from the thermal and radiation design of spacecraft, through systems engineering and architecture to technical project and programme management.

Susan previously worked at Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd where she was their Exploration Lead and deputy Head of Science. Prior to this she had undertaken a variety of roles on numerous small satellite programmes. This included a wide variety of R&D activities, payload developments and leading the Thermal and Space Environment design for the GIOVE-A mission, the first Galileo pre-cursor spacecraft.

Susan holds a PhD in Spacecraft Systems Engineering, a Masters in Astronautics and Spacecraft Engineering and a BSc in Physics with Astrophysics. Her evident capability and enormous enthusiasm for Space Science and Engineering makes her the perfect Head of Outreach.

Brian is the Spacecraft Production Lead at In-Space. He has a huge amount of experience building small spacecraft and holds ESA certification for electronic assemblies.

After starting his career training at Marconi Defence Systems in Portsmouth working on torpedoes, Brian then gained experience on video phones and inflight entertainment systems before transferring to Matra Marconi Space. He worked in the manufacturing department on Skynet 4 spacecraft before moving to Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd working on the UoSAT 12 platform.

At Surrey Brian progressed from contractor through to the Assembly, Integration and Test department where he soon become the Electrical/Mechanical Lead. He has worked on a range of spacecraft including the Galileo constellation and has supported clients all over the globe. Brian also has experience in leading and supporting launch campaigns in Russia, India and the US across a variety of launch vehicles.

Andrew is a Principal Groundsegment Systems Engineer at In-Space. He joined in 2020 having supported In-Space as a consultant for some time on the Faraday-1 mission. He was previously the Technical Manager for Satellite Data Exploitation at Surrey Satellite technology Ltd, focussing on working with customers to derive tangible benefits from their satellite imagery.

Prior to that, he was Team Leader of the Groundsegments team, seeing the end-to-end lifecycle of numerous groundsegments across the world in support of the SSTL satellites. These multi-million pound groundsgements would include groundstation installations along with Spacecraft Operation Centres and Mission Operation Centres, providing spacecraft control and command as well as mission planning systems and data processing systems for the downloaded imagery. Whilst at SSTL, Andrew was also part of the team that successfully launched the first mobile phone into space as a component of the STRaND-1 cubesat.

He has a keen interest in demonstrating the benefits of space and satellite imagery in developing and limited-resource countries, having worked as a VSO volunteer in Ethiopia for three years developing the in-country computing resources and skills of medical and other staff at the Gondar University and Hospital.

Andrew holds a Masters in Computer Animation and Visualisation from Bournemouth University and a Degree in Computer Science from the University of Liverpool. He is also a member of the British Computer Society.

Hana is a Spacecraft Operations Engineer at In-Space. A lover of space and all things leopard print, she started her career at SSTL after completing her A-Levels as a fresh-faced Materials and Mechanical testing engineer squishing and pulling things apart on a tensile testing machine. After deciding to enter the world of Spacecraft Operations in 2017 she completed an HNC level 4 in electronic engineering.

Hana has worked on a variety of projects ranging from day-to-day image scheduling to decommissioning a satellite and deploying the worlds first de-orbit sail on TDS-1 and Carbonite.

Hana joined In Space to pursue her goal of seeing a project from concept through to launch and start of service, and broaden her Operations skill-set.

Natalia is an aerospace engineer by background and worked for many years in the jet engines industry as a manager and project lead for global companies such as Rolls-Royce. Natalia moved recently to the Space Industry and completed a Master in Space Studies Course at International Space University. Natalia is working for In-Space as Technical Project Manager, responsible for delivery of our small satellites for Earth Observation.

Natalia is a mentor for UNOOSA Space4Women network and her goal is to support women to join the space industry making it diverse and inclusive.

James was originally an economist before becoming an officer in the British Army and spending almost 10 years as a helicopter pilot.

As well as the day job, James managed various aerospace projects for the military around the world with a focus on integrating new technologies and processes to improve UK operational capability.

Following his military career, and after a brief stint in the UK film industry, James turned his efforts once again to the skies and joined In-Space Missions as Technical Project Manager.

Amy is the Space Services Manager at In-Space for the Faraday "Space as a Service" platform. She takes pride in designing and delivering services that are customer focussed, efficient and business enabling. Amy takes a multi-disciplinary approach to service design, utilising ITIL best practice for IT service management, applying agile software development practices to deliver value from services faster and lean six sigma analysis techniques for continual service improvement.

Prior to In-Space, Amy worked at BAE Systems Applied Intelligence, gaining more than 10 years of service delivery experience. She designed, transitioned and delivered support services for enterprise cyber security solutions for both commercial and government customers. Having held a variety of positions from Support Engineer through to Service Delivery Manager and Service Architect, Amy understands services from the inside out.

Amy holds an MPhys in Physics with Nuclear Astrophysics and a PhD in Theoretical Nuclear Physics, both from the University of Surrey.

Richard is a Space Systems Engineer at In-Space. He joined in 2020 having been Spacecraft Communications Engineer at the Surrey Space Centre responsible for the ground station and spacecraft operations.

Before this, Richard worked as the lead flight software engineer responsible for developing the flight software architecture and Mission Control System used by the SSC. Past missions have included the UKSA’s Alsat-1N mission, Remove Debris, and Inflate Sail. He has hands-on experience in most areas of nanosatellite engineering from concept design through to end of life.

Richard has a Bachelor’s degree in physics from the Open University and completed a Masters in Space Technology at the University of Surrey.

Andrew is a Space Systems Engineer at In-Space primarily supporting AOCS and design tools. He brings a wealth of systems engineering experience from the defence industry. Working across the development lifecycle of multimillion pound systems Andrew has seen the benefits strong engineering principles, systems thinking and close customer interaction can bring and continues to employ these skills today. Andrew is passionate about staying on the cutting edge and has been involved in numerous tooling developments from automation scripts to developing a ‘Big Data’ infrastructure.

Andrew holds a Masters in Astrophysics from the University of Edinburgh.

Richard joins In-Space as a Space Systems Engineer. Having previously spent 4 years as a systems engineer at Airbus working on the world record breaking Zephyr, Richard decided 65,000ft was no longer high enough altitude so came back to the space industry. Richard had previously spent a year working at SSTL as a mechanical engineer and is looking forwards to combining his mechanical and systems experience as In-Space develop the 2nd Generation Faraday platform.

Matt is a Junior Electronics Systems Engineer at In-Space. He completed his Masters degree in Electronic Engineering with Space Systems at the University of Surrey which included a dissertation project to design and build the motor control system for an 8m wingspan UAV to fly on Mars. Previously Matt has worked in both the Automotive and Motorsport sectors as an Electrical Integration Engineer with a focus on Electric Vehicles, including projects with Imperial College London on new and innovative battery technologies.

Matthew joined In-Space as a Systems and Thermal Engineer as a recent graduate in 2020. He graduated with an MEng degree in Computer-aided Mechanical Engineering from Glasgow Caledonian University with projects focussing on heat transfer studies and the design and development of the aerodynamics package for a Formula style race car.

Matthew also spent a semester at Universitat Politècnica de València as part of an Erasmus exchange working on product development.

Louis is an Assembly, Integration and Test engineer here at In-Space Missions. He completed a 4 year Aeronautical Engineering apprenticeship with QinetiQ at MOD Boscombe Down in early 2019.

After a long term placement at QinetiQ Space UK, he went onto joining their Electric Propulsion team building and testing Gridded Ion engines. Louis was part of the production team which delivered T6 Ion thrusters for flight on ESA’s BepiColumbo mission to Mercury. He was also instrumental to the manufacture of their T7 prototype ring-cusp thruster. Louis has gained practical hands-on experience in space flight assembly. He now spends his days in the cleanroom, his natural environment, happily developing payload CubeSats.

Jane joined the team in May 2021 as Marketing Communications Specialist. She has a wealth of Communications and Marketing experience in the space sector as well over 30 years PR and communications experience across business to business and consumer PR. Notably, over 6 years, Jane successfully worked to build up the UKspace Trade Association internal and external communications capabilities as well as strengthening relations with key stakeholders while supporting the Director and Senior Management Team.

Peter is a Systems Engineer for In-Space. He joined the team in 2021 after having been a Mission Concepts Engineer at Surrey Satellite Technology Limited, working on a broad range of projects and bids from technology demonstration microsatellites to interplanetary probes.

Previously Peter spent time in the Propulsion team working on Geostationary satellites and small electric propulsion thrusters, as well as helping with service delivery and spacecraft data analysis leveraging skills in Python. During his degree he created an additively-manufactured ramjet, and helped design a hybrid rocket.

Peter holds a Master's Degree in Spacecraft Engineering from the University of Southampton. Away from work he is very busy with a wide range of hobbies, including fencing, civil war re-enactment, (astro)photography, two 3D printers, and sci-fi starship design.

Michael now works at In-Space after a career that has already covered Space batteries, deployable structures and antennas, and ground stations utilising cloud networking to enhance connectivity. He has 15+ years of experience in space engineering, project management, and business development. He is a good communicator with experiences including being a Technical Manager on components for ESA’s GAIA, BepiColombo, and Solar Orbiter interplanetary missions. He has also been a member of staff and visiting lecturer at the International Space University in Strasbourg, and has experience at both NASA, and the UK MoD. Michael has a BEng Honours from Kingston University, and an MSS degree in Space Studies from the ISU in Strasbourg. He also has his pilot’s license.

Debbie joined In-Space Missions in April 2021 as Finance Assistant. With over 30 years of administration experience, Debbie has worked within a number of business sectors including recruitment, estate agency, telecommunications, the event industry, as well as accountancy. She has also successfully set up her own business supporting small businesses with their administration requirements.

Pej joined In-Space Missions as a Space Systems Engineer in January 2021. He has a wealth of experience gained from working in the space industry across a wide range of space missions. Previously he worked with SSTL, where he led the design and development of a large MEO constellation as well as working as the Earth Observation Business Line Manager shaping and championing new opportunities for the company.

During his time at SSTL he also worked as a Mission System Engineer, responsible for several projects, including the OptiSAR constellation and prior to this he worked on the design and delivery of the Carbonite 2 platform, Galileo FM01/2 Payloads and other exciting mission concept studies such as CHEOPS and SAOCOM-CS.

Pej has always been passionate about space from a young age and this was reinforced by his physics teacher in high school which led him to study at Kingston University where he graduated with an MEng in Aerospace Engineering & Astronautics.

Theodora joined In-Space Missions as a Spacecraft Operations Engineer. She recently graduated from a 2nd Level Master in Space Exploration and Development Systems at Politecnico di Torino, Italy. For her final group project, she worked on the conceptual design of a mission to Titan.

Theodora holds an MSc in Theoretical Physics from University of Edinburgh and a BSc in Physics with Astrophysics from University of Glasgow. She is also an active volunteer of the Space Generation Advisory Council.