As a child, space scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock was allowed to stay up late and watch one programme, The Sky at Night. She mainly grew up in light-polluted London, unable to see much outside the window of her family's council flat in Camden, but still she had a fascination with space. Some long winter nights, walking home from school across Hampstead Heath, she would look up and think, "Patrick talked about that constellation, I can see it now."

Patrick Moore presented the astronomy programme for more than 50 years; from next month, Aderin-Pocock will present the series, with astrophysicist Chris Lintott, in a new monthly slot on BBC4. "It's a wonderful opportunity, but with a bit of fear and trepidation as well," she says. "[Patrick] was just such an iconic figure. There is no way I could fill his shoes, it's just trying to continue the legacy really."

But she is a wonderful choice. Aderin-Pocock has a talent for sharing her enthusiasm, having spent the last few years giving talks to more than 100,000 schoolchildren, particularly at inner city schools, and delivering lectures all over the world. She has already presented two documentaries; one on satellites, the other about the moon. Quite apart from her obvious passion and charisma – in person, as on screen, she is warm and funny, every sentence seemingly delivered with a smile – it is gratifying to see a black, female scientist, of middle age, being given a higher profile by the BBC.



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You can't help but wonder what Moore, her inspiration, would have thought of her (this is the man who said, of immigrants, "we are being swamped by parasites"; of women, whom he also believed had ruined the BBC, "I used to watch Doctor Who and Star Trek but they went PC – making women commanders, that kind of thing"). Has she given much thought to that? She laughs. "I always thought it would have been interesting if we met because I don't know what he would have made of me. I appeared on The Sky at Night twice before, but I never actually met him. We'd have a shared enthusiasm, that's what I hope. We would have found common ground. I think he was of a different era, and times evolve. That doesn't excuse it, but it does mean things change."

Aderin-Pocock's interest in space began with The Clangers, the children's show about those funny pink creatures who live on another planet. We sit in the dining room of her house in Guildford, Surrey, where she lives with her husband, an engineer, and their three-year-old daughter, and I notice a stuffed Clanger sitting on one of the chairs. "I was about three years old. I wanted to go and visit them," she says. Born in 1968, she grew up with the excitement surrounding Neil Armstrong's moon landing. "Going to space seemed the natural thing that everybody would be doing, which is why I wanted to visit the Clangers. I don't know how aware I was that only a few people had been into space, but I thought if people could do it then that was definitely what I wanted to do."

For a long time, that dream looked impossible. She has dyslexia, which meant her teachers thought she was a bit dim and put her in remedial classes. "I was frustrated and just felt stupid. I thought school wasn't for me. But at the same time I was going home and my father – like many African immigrants, he thought education was the key – would be talking about which university I would be going to." He never believed his daughter was anything other than intelligent, she says. "He also thought that if you work hard enough, you will be amazed at what you can achieve."

Aderin-Pocock can pinpoint the day she discovered a talent and passion for science. She was about 10, and the teacher had asked the class to calculate the weight of a cubic centimetre of water. "I put my hand up, thinking this is an easy one. I looked around and saw that no one else had their hand up. So I thought I must have it horribly wrong and put my hand back down, and then thought, oh give it a try. I answered the question and I think the teacher was surprised. I think it's that moment when you think, hey, I knew that – that enjoyment of getting something right, especially when nobody else had."

Patrick Moore: 'I don't know what he would have made of me,' says Maggie Aderin-Pocock. Photograph: Roger Bamber/Rex Features

Her older sister introduced her to science fiction, which she would devour. She became a Star Trek fan, and would visit the library with her father to borrow physics books. "It was like an adventure that we did together. When I started doing better in science the other subjects picked up as well, because I just had more of an interest in school. And I thought, 'maybe I'm not stupid. What else can I do?'"

Her parents had moved to the UK from Nigeria, but their growing family – they had four daughters – put an end to her father's hope to study medicine. Instead he managed a restaurant, then opened his own import and export business. When she was four, her parents separated and their daughters were caught in a fierce custody battle. Aderin-Pocock found refuge in physics, and her heroes were Spock and Sherlock Holmes: "I liked really logical characters. To a certain extent, they were unemotional and I think as a child emotions seem as if they can swamp you, and to be scientific and clinical seemed quite desirable. Some of that desire came from [wanting to] transcend human problems and be on a higher plane." It seemed to her, she says, that being emotionless was attractive to a sensitive child, often made to choose between warring parents, "trying to keep control of those emotions". Though she adds she thinks she was wrong about science: "I spend quite a bit of my time now going round with kids and showing them it is passionate, and I like to let my enthusiasm out."

Both her parents would win their custody battles from time to time before the other reopened the fight in court, so Aderin-Pocock moved to a huge number of schools – 13 by the time she was 18. "I think it has affected me in ways now," she says. "My husband knows people he went to primary school with and I don't have that connection at all. I think I'm used to quite transitory relationships. It made me quite flexible, learning how to fit in quite quickly, but it was also detrimental in other ways."

She must have been one of only a few black pupils at many of those schools, particularly the ones outside London (some years were spent on the south coast with her mother). She nods. "I remember as a child I never said I was British, I always said I was Nigerian, which was a bit of a misnomer because I've never been to Nigeria. But I had a horrible feeling that if I said I was English or British, somebody would say: 'No you're not, you're the wrong colour.' I think some kids felt I wasn't British – 'You don't belong here, why don't you go home?', that sort of thing. So I didn't want to be seen to be trying to be something that other people didn't want me to be. But at the same time I would find it hard because I would meet up with my cousins and relatives from Nigeria and because I don't speak Yoruba, my father's dialect, they would say: 'You're a lost Nigerian, you don't speak the language, you've never been there.'"

Maggie Aderin-Pocock at Nasa space centre for her BBC2 documentary Do We Really Need the Moon? Photograph: Tom Ranson/BBC

That idea of not feeling British, or Nigerian, is another reason she thinks she was attracted to space. "In space, race doesn't matter, nationality doesn't matter. In space, you see the world as a globe and you don't see the boundaries."

The one good thing about moving schools so much was she could leave her history behind and start again. At one of her last schools, back in London again with her father, they hadn't received a letter from her previous school – where she had been put in remedial classes – so they asked her which sets she should be in and she told them the top ones. Given this opportunity, she worked hard to stay there and thrived. At 14, she found an evening class where she learned how to make her own telescope, and spent months carefully polishing a mirror for it.

Going on to do a physics degree, followed by a PhD in mechanical engineering at Imperial College, the university she had walked past every time her father had taken her to visit the Science Museum as a child, was a dream. "We had access to amazing people. One of my professors was Tom Kibble [one of the physicists whose work predicted the existence of the Higgs boson] and I remember showing him a star-tracking program I had made. I would see Abdus Salam [the Nobel-winning physicist] walking down the corridor and would sort of feel his aura."

'I like to let my enthusiasm out' … Maggie Aderin-Pocock and daughter at the ZSL Soapbox Science event in 2011. Photograph: Anna Gordon

Her home life wasn't as happy. Her father had developed glaucoma and started to lose his sight. Aderin-Pocock and her younger sister cared for him, but when she moved out during her third year at university, he saw it as an abandonment. "I think he always assumed I would stay at home. We had a bit of a split about that." They were reconciled before he died, "but I don't think our relationship was the same ever again. For a few months, I felt totally cut off and my father wasn't talking to me really, but I think I had a fear that if I didn't do it then I might never. The break needed to happen."

Aderin-Pocock went on to join the Ministry of Defence, working on instruments to detect landmines, before going on to other jobs, including leading a group making observational instruments for the European Space Agency and Nasa, including the James Webb space telescope, Hubble's successor. She also set up her own company, touring schools to give talks on the universe.

At university, she thinks she was one of only two black students of around 200 physics undergraduates, and one of around 10 women, and in her career, she became used to standing out. She remembers visiting the site of a contractor. Even though she was wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase, as soon as she arrived, one man told her where the keys to the offices were. She didn't understand. "He said: 'The keys to the offices. You're going to go and clean them?'" She laughs. "When the contractor came out and heard what had happened he was mortified. It's stereotypes. Most women, and most black women, who come to that site are cleaners." A wide smile. "Though I was hoping the business suit and the briefcase might counteract that."

Another time, while still a PhD student, somebody mistook her for a university secretary. Again, she laughs about it, but doesn't it make her furious? "I think I would have been furious, but what's that saying about secretaries or cleaners? Why is any job too menial for me? But what bugs me is the assumption – that you see a black woman, she must be the cleaner. I can't take umbrage at it because it's not an insult, it's just the assumption that hurts. My mentality, if I do get upset about it, is that it's not hurting them – they've probably gone off, totally oblivious, but it's eating me up, so I think it's best to see these things in a relaxed light when possible. I think I'm sounding a lot more calm than I really am and sometimes I do get upset and angry, but sometimes it's quite fun – I hop in a taxi and the driver says, 'What do you do?' and I say, I'm a space scientist, and it's always, 'you what?'"

Why are there still so few women in science and engineering (just 13% of the science, technology, engineering and mathematics sector are women)? "I think in the past there were lots of limiting factors – that if women went up for these jobs, they wouldn't be accepted. But these days I think quite a bit of it is internal." She says the lack of visible female scientists is self-fulfilling – girls don't see them, so they assume it's not a job they could do. "There are also challenges related to childcare. Some branches of science are really cut-throat and if you have to take time off approaching the peak of your career, that is going to be detrimental. So there is inherent sexism in that way and until you get a better balance in that, there will always be a deficit. When I had to tell my boss I was pregnant I felt so guilty, and I have no idea why."

Aderin-Pocock applied to the European Space Agency to train as an astronaut around the same time Tim Peake did. Peake has become the ESA's first British astronaut, but Aderin-Pocock didn't get very far, she says with a laugh. "I'm not as fit as I used to be, but I still dream of getting into space." Last month, she was cheered by David Willetts, the science minister, saying humankind should put its first woman on the moon. "One of my dream goals was to build a telescope on the moon, because it's a good environment for one. You could have a telescope in one of the dark craters of the moon looking out at the sky." Her other vague idea is to retire on a one-way trip to Mars.

She remembers the advice of a teacher who, when told she wanted to be a space scientist, said Aderin-Pocock shouldn't set her hopes too high. "I think she was trying to save me from pain, but I think that's wrong. I think people should aspire high and if I don't achieve my ultimate goal – I might never get into space – it doesn't matter, because I will have achieved so much more than if I hadn't tried."

Getting into space, she says, "was a crazy idea when I was a child, and it's still a crazy idea." But she's much closer now than she was then, I point out. She smiles. "But that's the power of having a dream. You look for things that make it possible."

• The Sky at Night opens in its new BBC4 slot in February.