Question: what was the first project you worked on?

Mike Heyns answered on 9 Oct 2022:

My first proper project as a first year intern at the South African National Space Agency was setting up a large loop antenna (literally a lot of wire and some PVC pipes) and connecting it to a receiver that can monitor sudden ionospheric disturbances. The antenna and receiver picked up VLF (very low frequency) waves that bounce off the ionosphere and are used for communication. When there is a solar flare, the ionosphere (the ionised region of our atmosphere) changes and so does the signal of VLF waves we received – so we where basically monitoring the occurrence of solar flares.