{"id":674683,"date":"2026-07-05T07:42:05","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T07:42:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/674683\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T07:42:05","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T07:42:05","slug":"scientist-who-cleaned-space-toilet-on-work-experience-now-leading-mars-exploration-teams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/674683\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientist who cleaned space toilet on work experience now leading Mars exploration teams"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cleaning a space toilet while on work experience was Claire Parfitt’s first introduction to a career away from Earth’s orbit.<\/p>\n

But she never imagined her time at the National Space Centre in Leicester, when she was 14, would one day see her lead a team exploring future Mars missions.<\/p>\n

Parfitt, originally from Nottingham, now works for the European Space Agency’s European Space Research and Technology Centre in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n

The 42-year-old joined the space industry after securing a physics degree and a PhD in spacecraft power systems engineering.<\/p>\n

She has since worked on missions such as the ExoMars, external<\/a> Rosalind Franklin rover, which will explore the surface of Mars. <\/p>\n

She has also worked on the SMILE, external<\/a> mission – officially known as the Solar wind, Magnetospheric, Ionic Link Explorer mission – which uses four science instruments to study how Earth responds to the solar wind from the Sun.<\/p>\n

But Parfitt still recalls how support in her early years, including from her science teachers at Fernwood School in Wollaton, helped pave the way for her career.<\/p>\n

She had initially applied for work experience at NASA, which was turned down, but she was eventually able to secure a placement at the National Space Science Centre.<\/p>\n

During her time there, staff were planning and collecting artefacts for the opening of the country’s flagship space science attraction – the National Space Centre.<\/p>\n

“I just knew that’s always what I wanted to do,” she said.<\/p>\n

“The Director of the Space Centre in those days was a lady called Alex Hall.<\/p>\n

“To see someone in that position, I think it really helped me to envisage my own career in the space industry.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cleaning a space toilet while on work experience was Claire Parfitt’s first introduction to a career away from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":674684,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-674683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/674684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}