Member spotlight – Abigail Hoover

By Elizabeth Chao

Ever since she first saw Callie, the project manager, at a party controlling the satellite on her phone, Abigail (Abi) Hoover was intrigued, and knew she wanted to join the AlbertaSat team. That was almost 3 years ago. Now, Abi is an integral part of the 2U systems engineering team. 

Currently in her fourth year of Industrial Design, Abigail held the role of mission design team lead and recently transitioned to become part of the 2U system engineering team. Abigail is genuinely content with her current team, holding a deep appreciation for how her team gets to interact with other student groups across the country such as Yukon University and Aurora College, both of which are universities working in conjunction with AlbertaSat in the Northern SPIRIT project. Abi loves AlbertaSat’s family culture, which is why she has been a part of the team for so long, regarding that “the team is very tight, and everyone is welcoming towards new members.”

Aside from AlbertaSat, Abigail was a competitive rock climber for the University of Alberta and goes climbing whenever she finds time. During quarantine, Abi’s time has been spent upgrading her portfolio and gardening. She looks forward to going back to school the most when everything goes back to normal. Despite this, one advantage of being in quarantine is having more time to spend with her sheepadoodle named Winston! A fun fact about Abigail is that she is a fan of folk and alternative music, revealing that her playlists would primarily consist of any song made by “Said The Whale.” If given the opportunity to rename Ex-Alta 2, Abigail’s satellite would be named “LoafOfBreadSat” as CubeSats are the size of a loaf of bread! 

Abigail is most fond of being an operator for Ex-Alta 1 and is proud of her current role as a 2U engineer, rounding out system requirements for the Northern SPIRIT satellites: AuroraSat and YukonSat. Although she has many accomplishments as a part of AlbertaSat, it did not come easily. The biggest obstacle for Abi was overcoming the initial learning curve, reflecting that “it definitely takes some time for things to click and for you to fully comprehend what is going on.”

Abi’s advice for new members is to immerse yourself in the environment as much as you can by asking questions and doing self-driven research when possible. Overall, Abi believes that the opportunities created by being a part of AlbertaSat is extremely remarkable and she wouldn’t change them for the world!