Australia’s Space Sector Plan is a Plan for Jobs and Economic Growth

Throughout the recent S.A. State Dinner and Australian Space Forum the crucial message from Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and other lead speakers was that “Australia’s Space Sector Plan is a Plan for Jobs.”  

Dr Megan Clark, Head of the ASA, outlined that the Australian civil space market is already gaining traction, having grown $3.95B to $4.56B in the 2 years from 2016-2018. The same Australian Space Agency research findings also highlighted growth of 205% in the Start-up/ SME Sector and 132% in International businesses in Australia.

The Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, The Hon. Karen Andrews and the Premier of South Australia, Steven Marshall led the two days of activities with the P.M. and Dr Clark, including officially opening the Australian HQ of the ASA and the SmartSAT CRC. 

Other highlights included a panel discussion including former NASA Astronauts Andy Thomas AO and Pamela Melroy plus Dr Christyl Johnson; also celebrating the launch of AROSE (Australian Remote Operations for Space & Earth).

Dr Johnson, Deputy Director of Technology & Research Investments at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, led a panel on strategic considerations for the Australian space sector. Many of her insightful remarks resonated, in particular - collaboration, diversity of inputs, thinking out of the box, resilience and perseverance;

· If you really want to go beyond incremental improvements and providing leap frog technologies it requires the ultimate in innovative thinking and strategic partnering.

· A great thing about innovation is that you can find it everywhere. From curious people in their garage trying to find solutions, to innovative start-up companies and university labs with solutions strongly challenging problems, to large organisations with skunkworks groups bringing great minds together to solve shared challenges.

· If you have people accustomed to working together, with the same backgrounds, same experiences, same everything, you get groupthink. If you don’t have people pushing back saying, ‘Why are you doing it this way, can’t we do it another way?’, you aren’t pushing the envelope enough or being as innovative as you could be. It’s really important to bring in trusted people that might not be in your field and say, ‘this is my problem, let’s think about some solutions together?’

· Going to space is hard and you should be prepared to fail. Industry can become stronger through failure. In day-to-day operations that means you can’t let one bad day hold you back, just know it’s going to happen and learn from it. When there are failures, tests that go wrong and really bad days, it’s necessary to understand your risk posture and your risk mitigation strategy.

Peter Woodgate and Andy Koronios introduced the aims of SmartSAT CRC and what it brings to the Australian ecosystem;

Bringing the Space industry and the Spatial industry in Australia, much closer together for the purpose of accelerating the key goals established by the Australian Space Agency. Targeting 20,000 jobs, $12B uplift in GDP and a multi-Billion-dollar pipeline of investment funding by 2030.

SmartSAT CRC, is a Collaborative Research Center created to provide enhanced national connectivity, navigation and monitoring capability, by solving major satellite system and advanced communication challenges, encouraging researchers and industry to work closer together, with three nation-building objectives; R&D to bring Australia to a position ‘ahead of the curve’ in multiple areas globally, workforce education and capability development, helping to build the industry ecosystem and provide a fertile ground for future international companies to establish and grow from Australia.

Transcript of the Prime Minister’s address at the 2020 Australian Space Summit is at;

https://www.pm.gov.au/media/address-australian-space-forum