Dr Suzie Imber studied a four-year degree in physics at Imperial College London, before undertaking two internships at NASA, working in the Heliophysics Division at NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre, which steered her in the direction of planetary science.
She was the winner of the BBC Two series Astronauts: Do You Have What it Takes (2017) during which 12 candidates were put through astronaut training with NASA astronaut Chris Hadfield. She was put through challenges such as speaking Russian while in a centrifuge at 5g, carrying out emergency procedures on the NASA undersea astronaut training facility and taking her own blood, all things she may have to do in a space setting.
She was also selected for the 2019 intake of Homeward Bound, an international programme designed to train 1,000 women who will change the world. She was due to head to Antarctica with the programme in 2020, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this was postponed.
Dr Suzie Imber High Altitude mountaineer
Suzie was an England under-21 lacrosse player, elite rower and is now a high-altitude mountaineer. She has written computer code to automatically identify mountains in South America and found hundreds of mountains that had never been identified before. She sets of annually to scale these incredibly remote, unclimbed mountains, exploring new regions of our planet and even discovering Incan ruins on the summits.
Suzie launched a significant public engagement programme (INFO), having spoken with over 40,000 young people and at over 60 public events, sharing her story of space science, mountaineering, resilience and risk, and her ultimate dream of becoming an astronaut. She has worked alongside NASA, the UK Space Agency, QinetiQ and Virgin Galactic.
