Space Rocks: Lucy Hawking, Dominque Tipper and more incredible faces join panel
Lucy Hawking, Dominique Tipper, Shahrzad Timman, Sue Nelson and Tamsin Edwards will flex their knowledge at the day-long event
The award-winning Space Rocks has boosted their team as they have recently announced a plethora of incredible talent to this year’s event. The new additions consist of the award-winning science author Lucy Hawking, star of The Expanse Dominique Tipper, ESA space robot engineer Shahrzad Timman, science communicator, journalist Sue Nelson, and to top it off, climate scientist & lecturer at King’s College London Tamsin Edwards. They will all be joining the Space Rocks panel to take part to share their knowledge and passion for all things space-related in what promises to be a thrilling day for kids and adults.
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Space Rocks returns to indigo at The O2 on the 21 September 2019. A day-long festival of space exploration presented in association with the European Space Agency (ESA), is broken into three sections. Session one and two will once again be hosted by renowned science broadcaster Dallas Campbell, who will be introducing some of the most inspirational and talented people from the worlds of space exploration, art, music, and film for a unique celebration of the great beyond. Already confirmed for the event are ESA astronaut Tim Peake, double Oscar and Bafta award winner, VFX guru Paul Franklin, planetary scientist and BBC2’s Astronauts winner Suzie Imber, ESA rocket scientist Kate Underhill and BBC Sky at Night presenter Chris Lintott, and a performance from acclaimed violinist and composer Anna Phoebe.
Session Three is all about live music. Headliners Anathema will be playing a one-off set in collaboration with globally celebrated Somerset House resident multimedia artist Kristina Pulejkova, creating previously unseen visuals from the European Space Agency’s archives. Anathema founder and lead singer Vincent Cavanagh is developing a special set-list for the show that will dove-tail with Kristina’s visuals. The genre-defying Amplifier and cosmic rockers Voyager will also perform in Session Three.
Author Lucy Hawking makes science accessible and entertaining through her ‘George’ book series of six adventure novels based on real science for young readers. Written in collaboration with world-leading scientists, the George series is published in over 40 languages, including Zulu and Xhosa. In 2015, Lucy created the Principia Space Diary with Curved House Kids for the UK Space Agency, a book for primary students about astronaut Tim Peake’s mission to the ISS. Principia Space Diary was shortlisted in 2017 for the Arthur C Clarke award for education and outreach. In 2008, Lucy won the Sappio Prize for Popularising Science and in 2015, the UNSW medal for Outstanding Science Communication. In July 2015, Lucy was awarded an honorary doctorate in science by Queen Mary University London for her work in STEM education. With the Guardian Media Group, Lucy made a virtual reality film, The Party, about an autistic teenage girl. The Party has been nominated for an award in the ‘social impact’ category at the annual VR Awards 2018. Lucy is now the Chairperson of the Stephen Hawking Foundation.
The multi-talented Dominique Tipper made her film debut in Noel Clarke’s 2008 acclaimed Adulthood and has gone on to act in many other movies. She is currently one of the stars of Amazon Prime Video’s ongoing sci-fi series The Expanse. Based on the book series by James S. A. Corey and set centuries in the future, the show follows the crew of a spaceship as they navigate a war between various planets and alliances in our solar system. Season Four will launch on 13th of December and it has just been announced that the series has been picked up for a fifth season to follow. Dominique is a sci-fi fanatic, as well as a songwriter and performer under the name Miss Tipper.
ESA space robot engineer, Shahrzad Timman is an aerospace engineer who has been passionate about bringing humankind back to the Moon ever since she was a child. Inspired by the Apollo 13 mission and the legendary Mission Control, she committed to her dreams of space exploration. She is a PhD candidate working on Human–Robotic operations at ESTEC, ESA’s main technical centre, and believes that humans and robots both have unique qualities that make their combination extremely valuable in space operations.
Sue Nelson is one of the most respected journalists in science. An award-winning radio producer, science journalist, and former BBC TV science and environment correspondent. She has reported on science for all the BBC’s national television and radio news programmes. She has presented numerous Radio 4 programmes, was the editor of The Biologist (2010-15), and produces documentaries for BBC radio, as well as co-producing and presenting the Space Boffins podcast. In October 2018, Sue released her first book, Wally Funk’s Race for Space, the official biography of the incredible Wallace ‘Wally’ Funk. Received to great acclaim, the book tells the story of Wally’s inspiring journey to become the first female astronaut in the early 1960’s as part of the ‘Women in Space’ programme.
Tamsin Edwards is a Senior Lecturer in Physical Geography at King’s College London. Her research looks at how we confident we are in predictions from climate models about the range of possible futures we might face. She is particularly interested in how Greenland and Antarctica are responding to global warming. Tamsin regularly advises the UK Government on climate change and sea level rise and provides expert comment to national and international media. She is an award-winning communicator of climate science, including through Twitter and her blog for the Public Library of Science, PLoS.
Space Rocks’ inaugural bash in 2018 saw it winning Event Of The Year at the Prog Music Awards and was also nominated by the British Interplanetary Society for a Sir Arthur Clarke award – both hugely prestigious honours. In 2019, the world and indeed Space Rocks will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, as well as considering our next giant leaps, from new robotic and human missions to the Moon, onwards to Mars and the rest of the solar system. We’ll also be exploring the crucial role that space science has to play in tackling the climate crisis and other challenges facing us on our home planet.
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