Gaia People

Joe Pereira

ESA

Born in Nairobi, Kenya, Joe completed his education in the United Kingdom. He joined the Technical Directorate in ESTEC in February 1985, working on Electrical Ground Support Equipment (EGSE). He supported various projects and missions including, in Telecommunications, ECS (the European Communication Satellite), Eureka and a Microgravity payload on Spacelab D2.  He also participated in the Ulysses launch campaign in 1990.

Joe joined the Science Directorate in 1994 as the Payload AIV Engineer on Cluster, responsible for the integration of 11 payloads on each of four identical spacecraft.  Following the Cluster I disaster, he moved on to the very successful Cluster II mission, followed by both Mars Express and Venus Express.  He was involved in all the launch campaigns associated with these three missions and was part of the countdown team for all four Soyuz launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakstan (Cluster II being launched in two stages).

Joe joined the Gaia project in January 2006.  As AIV system engineer he was responsible for the operations of the Avionics Test Bench and the Integration and Environmental Testing of the Gaia Spacecraft. He was also part of the advance launch team preparing for start of the Gaia launch campaign.

[Published: 29/01/2014]