He's famed in Hong Kong for helping design its contribution to space discovery - tools for the Mir space station and European Mars missions. Ng Tze-chuen recalls in our new weekly series the highs and lows of 30 years working with celebrated scientists, battling bureaucracy ... and being tailed by spies
I found myself in Noordwijk, in the Netherlands, sometime in 1996. After endless trips to the European Space Agency in Paris, I managed to secure an appointment with Michael Eiden, a top agency scientist, and an invitation to give a presentation on our new design concept to collect micro-samples on the surface of Mars.
That night, while dining at my hotel, someone I had never met before tapped on my shoulder and asked a strange question: 'Dr Ng, how deep can it go?'
It took a while to realise this was Dr Eiden, the man I was supposed to meet after my presentation. He was asking the depth at which we could sample under the surface of Mars.
'Any depth you like,' I said. Actually, I had no idea of our capability. But the question and the greeting was a positive sign of what I could expect for the next day. The ESA consisted of about 15 countries, with an international outlook that was willing to accept spin-offs from outsiders.
Dr Eiden and his colleague Pierre Coste were the agency's experts responsible for conducting micro-sampling research a decade in advance of the Mars mission. Mars Express was tasked to study the possibility of life on the planet, and it was necessary to sample soil and rocks to search for biochemical signatures of past microscopic life forms.