Nigerian hopes for Moon telescope Dr Aderin-Pocock became interested in space at the age of six Nigerian astrophysicist Margare Aderin-Pocock has said she hopes to manage a project to build a telescope on the Moon - and dreams of being the first British-Nigerian in space. Born to Nigerian parents but brought up in Britain, Dr Aderin-Pocock's work on telescopes and scientific instruments has attracted much attention, and she was a finalist at FameLab 2005 - described as "the science world's equivalent of Pop Idol."
She told BBC World Service's Everywoman programme that she wished one day to go into space as a scientist - and wants to represent Nigeria as well as Britain.
"I thing the probability unfortunately is low - but there are quite a few exciting projects," she said.
"One idea is to build a telescope on the Moon. I have been to some wonderful locations, like Hawaii and Chile, and worked on the telescopes there - but they usually suffer from atmospheric turbulence.
"But by building something like that on the Moon, you get rid of all of that, and you get rid of the light pollution.
"In my day job, I'm a project manager - so managing a telescope on the Moon would be a fantastic goal for me, and then perhaps Mars and beyond."
Next generation
Dr Aderin-Pocock works at University College London's Optical Sciences Laboratory. She became fascinated by space at the age of six.
She recently designed a bench-mounted high-resolution optical spectrometer for the 8m Gemini-South telescope in Cerro Pachon, Chile.
NigeriaSat helped map the devastation caused by the Asian tsunami But she also has an ongoing interest in her "homeland" of Nigeria, and next year hopes to travel there in time to see the total solar eclipse.
While there, she intends to visit schools to teach children that the dream of space could be theirs, too.
She said that she believed what young people - especially young girls and those from ethnic minority backgrounds - needed were role models to get them involved in science.
"At university, I used to go out to schools, and some girls would say, 'oh no, it's boy's stuff,'" she said.
"Unless they see someone like them doing the subject, they might build up barriers in their mind and not realise it is possible for them.
"So to overcome this I go out to schools - I don't bill myself as a black scientist, I just bill myself as a scientist who loves space and astronomy."
NigeriaSat project
She also shows scientific principles, too, by letting off rockets and having races in the class.
She also spoke about how Nigeria had its own space programme, and how this could also help inspire young scientists.
This was a reference to NigeriaSat 1, which was launched in 2003, part of a consortium of satellites - including Turkey, Algeria, China and the UK - which form a programme to form a "disaster monitoring constellation".
"We have our own foothold in space," Dr Aderin-Pocock said.
Nigerian engineers and scientists came to the UK as the satellite was being built, and took that knowledge back, setting up their own base station to receive images from the satellite.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4674871.stm

We need more people like her! She's an honour to our race! clp) I'm particularly interested in the Nigerian space programme. Cheers.

hat sound nice, it is time for us to start looking the future, and let forget the past, the past will only slow us down no time to wast anymore, there are hope for Africa, its the origin of knowledge we know that for sure, lets wakeup and stand in our feet.


look at this link this is another Nigerian that have made history, solved the most difficult equation in the world


http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/PEEP..._gabriela.html

wow this is interesting

go nigeria!

This is a wonderful story that should get more publicity.I definately want to see more focus of Blacks in the sciences.



The women below should give her inspiration to follow her dream:





Stephanie Wilson is one of the mission specialists going up on the next shuttle -- Atlantis -- tentatively scheduled for September. She is one of just a handful of black women in NASA's stable of astronauts and mission specialists.



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Joan Higginbotham is scheduled to go this winter also.