How can we clean up space junk and make space sustainable? With GNOSIS chair Katherine Courtney

Data Malarkey - the podcast about using data smarter

In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles talks to Katherine Courtney, Chair of the Steering Board of GNOSIS, the Global Network on Sustainability In Space. Katherine has had a significant career in business, public life, and public service. After a decade in telecoms and communication, Katherine had a series of high profile civil service jobs – at the Home Office and Departments of Work & Pensions and Business, Innovation, & Skills. In 2016, she became Chief Executive of the UK Space Agency.

Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on 28 February 2023.

Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.

Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.

Voice over by Samantha Boffin.

Having been “in the right place at the right time” to become head of the UK Space Agency in 2016, the final frontier has remained a passion, driver, and employer ever since. From being a STEM (Science Technology Engineering & Mathematics) ambassador in U.K. primary schools, encouraging tweenagers to nurture their passion for space exploration, to heading the Global Network for Sustainability in Space, Katherine very definitely looks up – above the atmosphere and into the great beyond.

The GNOSIS Network brings together industry and academic experts to tackle the leading challenges facing the “man-made night sky” circling our planet, where the number of satellites has mushroomed five-fold to more than 10,000 in just 20 years. Space is becoming more congested, contested, and commercialised, just as the skies within the atmosphere did post-World War II with the explosion of international air travel.

In addition to thousands of satellites, there are also 130 million pieces of uncontrollable debris orbiting Earth, 29,000 of which are sized between an orange and a double-decker bus, all travelling at almost 18,000 mph. From these brief notes, it’s clear that Katherine sees a critical role for data in storytelling – provided the numbers, which she claims to find hard to recall, are put in context.

Katherine tells a fabulous story of work she did while Director of Customer Insight at the U.K. Government’s Department of Work & Pensions. She transformed her 600-strong team of rear-view-mirror-gazing number crunchers into an army of predictive analytics experts. By blending qualitative and quantitative data – as Professor Rusi Jaspal was discussing in the previous episode – and adopting techniques of consumer market research including customer journey mapping and personae development, she massively upped the DWP’s insights game. This work enabled senior colleagues to walk in their customers shoes, to inhabit the lives of benefit claimants.

For Katherine – a dual U.K. / U.S. national – the worst misuse of data in living memory was POTUS45’s refusal to accept the results of the November 2020 election, encouraging and fomenting his supporters to storm the Capitol. And while she’s optimistic that U.S. democratic structures were able to withstand this wilful riding roughshod over what the numbers were saying, it was a salutary moment in the country’s history.

EXTERNAL LINKS

Katherine’s LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/kcourtneybis/

Katherine on Twitter – https://twitter.com/kcourtneybis

GNOSIS – the Global Network for Sustainability In Space – https://gnosisnetwork.org. Delightfully, gnosis is the Ancient Greek for knowledge

GNOSIS on Twitter - https://twitter.com/GNOSIS_Space

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