Maggie Aderin-Pocock

Meet the scientist "blasting off into space" at the Christmas Lectures.

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Every Christmas, a tradition for science fans is to sit down and watch the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures (see box). This year, on the 200th anniversary of the lectures, science hero and the BBC’s The Sky At Night presenter Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock will be taking audiences on an epic voyage through time and space. The Week Junior Science+Nature travelled to the Royal Institution in London to chat with Dr Maggie. “I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love space,” she says, and she is certainly no stranger to explaining the wonders of the universe. Dr Maggie told us that she has spoken to around 650,000 people about space in the last 21 years, which is her proudest achievement.

Reaching for the stars

Aderin-Pocock was born in 1968, the year before humans first landed on the Moon. Although she was too young to remember it, “someone once said that I was taking my first small steps as Neil Armstrong was taking his giant leap,” she says. TV shows also had a big impact on Aderin-Pocock’s early life. She grew up with The Clangers, a children’s series about a knitted family of aliens living on a tiny planet, which she “fell in love with”.

Another favourite TV show was the science-fiction series