Libby Jackson is the head of Space Exploration for the UK Space Agency. She has turned a childhood passion for space into a wide-ranging career. She was flight instructor and controller at Europe’s Mission Control Centre for the International Space Station. She then joined the UK Space Agency in 2014 and led their education programme when the astronaut Tim Peake went into space. She is now one of Britain’s leading experts in human spaceflight, and last year was awarded an OBE for her work.

Libby’s musical passions reflect the vast wonder of space but also her love of choral music and her adventures in Newfoundland as a teenager with works by Handel, Verdi and Shanneyganock.

Producer Clare Walker