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Asked by tomk999 to Adam, Alexander, Aron, Jess, Neil on 13 Mar 2014.
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Jessica Marshall answered on 13 Mar 2014:
There are quite a few different things – one which springs to mind is working out everything on the spacecraft that will bend during the mission and then cause the instruments to not point in the right direction and by how much. And then work out how to stop it and account for it.
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Alexander Finch answered on 13 Mar 2014:
Oooh that’s hard to say! Designing spacecraft is always tricky because the are such complicated things, and they must always work perfectly! Luckily, many engineers will different skills will come together to try and break the difficult design problem into smaller parts, making it a little less complex for each engineer.
For me as a systems engineer, I think the most complicated problem is how to change one thing without causing problems for other things!
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Neil Bowles answered on 13 Mar 2014:
Definitely working on the Mars seismometer for NASA’s InSight Mars lander.
Seismometers measure very small movements of the ground (for detecting Earthquake far away) and are very delicate instruments. Getting one that is both sensitive enough to detect possible Marsquakes and strong enough to survive launch into space and landing on Mars has turned out to be really tough. Getting the electronics ready to survive the harsh environment on the Martian surface (gets cold <-100C and there is more radiation from space than the Earth) was also a challenge. Add to this the fact that we sterilise everything we send to Mars to prevent sending bugs from Earth, and its taken a lot effort, but we've got there!
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Aron Kisdi answered on 18 Mar 2014:
Driving across the Atacama off-road to retrieve a car with two blown tyres.
Technically: writing software for our robots based on co-routines, and running a CDF study.
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