Actually, it is rocket science

“As soon as you start working in space, you catch a bug and you can’t do anything else”. 

Aude Vignelles exudes enthusiasm as she reels off her reasons for building a career pushing the boundaries of space science. Among them, sheer curiosity.

“Where do we come from? How far can we go? What’s the origin of life? For this, you need to go to space”.  

Then there’s the chance to challenge herself.

“To go to space, you need to innovate. You need to develop technologies that don’t exist today. You need to push the boundaries of what’s possible. And I like doing things that have never been done before”.

But for Vignelles is “the benefit it has for Earth”. From tracking climate change, to fire-safety blankets, to the tiny tech in our smartphone, she says we reap the rewards of space science every day. 

(L) Images of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko taken by Rosetta’s navigation camera, (R) Rosetta mission poster showing the deployment of the Philae lander to comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Image credits: ESA/Rosetta/NavCam and ESA/ATG medialab

In this light, it’s easy to see why Vignelles is so excited about what she does. We spoke to her as part of FW’s Renaissance Women series, which celebrates women changing the world (and beyond!) through their work. 

Vignelles is one such woman. A space and aeronautics systems engineer with 30 years in the sector, she is at the vanguard of space research.

When she launched her career in 1992 at the European Space Agency (ESA), the field was still dominated by men. But Vignelles, a French-Australian national, says she was raised on the stories of female trailblazers, inspiring her to aim high.

“There have been waves of feminism in France from the Second World War,” she says. “So women, throughout my education, were always present in all the fields you can imagine – arts, literature, science. We also had a female astronaut in the early 90s in France. So we had a lot of examples, nothing was impossible because you’re a woman.” 

Vignelles worked on some of the ESA’s biggest projects, including the ground-breaking Rosetta mission which, among other achievements, landed a small robot on a comet hurtling through space some half a million miles (890,000 km) away. 

“I realised, by sharing my experience, the good bits and the bad bits, that people feel less lonely and they realise, ‘if she’s made it, and she’s all right, and she survived, maybe I can give it a go too’.” 

She later became the inaugural Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of the Australian Space Agency (ASA) which launched in 2018 and saw its first astronaut complete training this year. That astronaut – Katherine Bennell-Pegg – was Vignelles’ first employee and is part of a shift in the gender balance in the space industry. 

“When I set up the Chief Technology Office in Australia and the Australian Space Agency, all my recruits were women… And at some point, HR told me, you need to recruit men,” she says. “What a nice problem to have.” 

Despite the fact that Vignelles is often asked to speak about her career, she had never considered herself a role model. This changed when a young student called her an “inspiration” after hearing a speech she had given. Vignelles was initially caught by surprise, but soon discovered the power of sharing her story. 

“I realised, by sharing my experience, the good bits and the bad bits, that people feel less lonely and they realise, ‘if she’s made it, and she’s all right, and she survived, maybe I can give it a go too’.” 

She wants girls and women to know that “if you have a passion, if you want to study STEM, if you want to have a career in STEM, just go and do it, and don’t take no for an answer.”

Lutetia at closest approach. Image credit: ESA 2010 MPS for OSIRIS Team

But Vignelles is determined not to gloss over the challenges she faced building both a career and a family. The mother of twins said she found it “really, really hard” in the early days of parenthood, especially as she had just emigrated to Australia. She relays one particular occasion in which she realised the significance of speaking honestly about the struggle.

“At the end of my speech, a lady talked to me and said, ‘I’m exactly where you were. I have eight-month-old twins. I want to give up everything. And just hearing that you went through this – and it’s normal to feel like this – you made my day’. And I [thought], if I can impact the life of one person like this, it’s well worth it.” 

Vignelles left the ASA in April to launch her own company, Vignelles Space. She now provides advice to space programs around the world from her base in Sydney. The career move has given her the work-life balance she was looking for.  As the former CTO says, “life’s too short” not to make room for family and time for herself. And she has some advice for people who, like her, can spend too many hours at their laptops.

“Stop, step back, and don’t spend the whole day at your desk”. She advises people to break up their work day with a walk or a swim and not to feel guilty about it, because your mind is still on the job. “You’re thinking about [your work] in other environments and that makes you work richer”. 

“Everything you develop for space has a return on Earth,” she says. “Everything that we’re going to be able to develop for space nutrition, we’re going to be able to apply it on the ground.” 

Collaboration also makes us ‘work richer’, according to Vignelles. It’s one of the reasons she loves the space industry. The International Space Station (ISS) is a case in point. Its operation depends on a broad network of countries working together, including some who, on Earth, can’t get along. Vignelles points out it was a Russian Soyuz rocket that recently delivered extra supplies to US astronauts on the ISS after their flight home got postponed (by nine months!). 

“I haven’t seen any other discipline than space that can bring collaboration to that level,” she says. “Space is a very strong diplomatic tool that we sometimes forget about. Doing space [projects] together keeps a channel open… and politicians know that [space is a] very important collaboration tool”.

While Australia is still very much a junior partner in the global space industry, Vignelles says it punches above its weight in really unique ways. 

“They’re looking into how to make plants [that] you can grow in space,” says Vignelles. She is on the advisory board for a South Australian-based project studying ways for astronauts to grow their own food. Being able to do so would be vital for a long haul mission, say, to Mars. 

“They looked into the most robust plant you can find on Earth and apparently duckweed is something that is very robust… so they tried to genetically modify that to make it taste different and also to have the [right] protein amounts”. 

The trick is making this hardy, nutritious pond plant taste less pond-y. It’s why scientists are searching for ways to splice in some flavour, like that of cheese or chicken. Space horticulture might seem bizarre but it could hold the key to food security here on Earth. And we’re back to why Vignelles is so passionate about her work.

“Everything you develop for space has a return on Earth,” she says. “Everything that we’re going to be able to develop for space nutrition, we’re going to be able to apply it on the ground.” 

“All the equipment in your iPhone is a spin back from things we’ve developed for space application, because everything has to be small and light. It costs a lot of money to send mass into space. So… everything we do in space always has a spin back for the benefit of Earth. That’s incredible.”

Image credit: FW/Teniola Komolafe