Space-Services-Australia

Stella Xu: Hi everyone. Welcome to Space Services Australia's room. My name is Stella Xu. I come from Main Sequence Ventures and we back deep tech founders inventing tomorrow. Today I'll be the moderator for this Q&A session. If you haven't, please post your questions in the Q&A forum and let's get started. First, tell us more about yourself Chris and Brenton.

Chris: Well I guess I can start with where we've come from. I got into space actually in my last year of uni where I was working for Google Lunar X team. I was trying to help them land a rover on the moon. Then from there moved down to UNSW Canberra to help start a space group. Then as you saw in our video, we've had some wins and we've had some not so wins. Through that experience, we've ended up trying to figure out how to make space safe. That's part of it. Brenton did you want to jump in?

Brenton: Yes, so I've got a similar story to Chris, I first fell in love with aerospace when my dad took me to a RAF Falcon nine jet. I got to see the cockpit and I just fell in love with aerospace. Since then I've gone throughout my career just doing aerospace engineering. I did my PhD with UNSW Canberra S pace, I started in 2015 to send the next satellite formation flying and simulating space crafts, and that's culminated in Space Services Australia.

Stella: Awesome. Both of you have very, very interesting zoom background. Tell us a little bit more about that. I like how dynamic it is.

Chris: Yes well I guess my zoom background's on the ground and Brenton's in space. Brenton's is actually part of the products that we were presenting about earlier, cyber-physical studio. We can show you some footage from in that simulator later, but I can talk about this. This is part of the picture of the future. What we do at Space Services Australia is make simulations of physical things and connect them up with hardware. Then when you do that, it means you can do your testing on the ground in a safe to fail environment, really. That's what this hamster ball like thing is here. It's a picture of a spacecraft in a hands full on a spherical air bearing. It's being actively tricked to think that it's in space so that people can make sure that what they put into space works. Brenton, do you want to talk more about your background?

Brenton: Yes so this lovely image here is a rendering from a prototype that we've been developing. It's a 3-D model rendered using the game engine Unreal Engine. That may not mean much to you but it's just a powerful way that we can develop this digital twin technology that we're developing for Space Services Australia and package it in a really, really pretty way.

Stella: Well and how big or are they in the actual size?

Chris: Well funnily enough, this almost is about the right size. Miniaturized satellites, the three use the ones you saw in the photo of me, that's about the size of a loaf of bread. There you go down to smaller. A one new cube side, is a 10 by 10 by 10 cube. Then what you do is you have multiple units that you put together and you can make bigger space craft. A three-u is just three of those 10 by 10 by 10 cubes put together. The way satellites normally class is by weight. The sort of satellites that we help, fall into that small satellite class. Things below 500 kilograms, so from the loaf of bread to a washing machine.

Stella: That is very, very light. 500 grams.

Chris: 500 kilograms sorry.

Stella: 500 kilograms. Okay.

Chris: That would be very light.

Stella: Yes yes I totally get wrong the dimensions. That's great. Tell us a little bit more about maybe the summary of your solution and the market.

Chris: Yes it might be-- Here, I might share my screen. I have a slide prepared for this, in fact. Let's jump in. The market that we're serving is two fold. You've got people who want to provide components for spacecraft. Whether that's something called a reaction wheel or it's actually the spacecraft chassis or a solar panel. Then you've got people who want to build spacecraft. That might be defense or commercial customers or it might be educators who are trying to provide students with interactive experience or researchers who are trying to push that envelope. What our platform does is let you build those digital parts, connect them up, give the hardware and then we're putting in place a marketplace for physical things. You can buy those digital components, build up a spacecraft that's essentially very realistic very quickly. It sets you up so that if you decide to buy those parts, you can procure them from those suppliers. We help the supply side and we help the demand side through a software as a service platform and then connect them through a visual marketplace. Does that answer your question?

Stella: Yes it does. Who else is in this space?

Brenton: I think that's you.

Chris: I think people who-- What we do sort of falls under three main branches. That's making digital twins. As we said in the video, digital twins really just simulations connected to physical things. The realization of internet of things, what happens when you take internet of things systems, connect them up with a model to turn that data into information. Then there's space simulation software. That's how do you plan what your orbit going to look like. How do you figure out whether your spacecraft is going to run into someone else's spacecraft and how do you make sure that your spacecraft sees what you want to see? Then the last sort of market segment is operations. Particularly with these types of satellites these days you don't talk about building one cube set, you talk about building hundreds. There's a company out there called Planet Labs. They operate 180 of these spacecraft simultaneously. To do that one, you need to get them in formation, and that's something that Brenton is an expert on. Then you've also got to make sure that you keep them healthy all the time. There are people providing operations services, there are people who provide the simulation software and there are people who build digital twins. There's no one out there who builds digital twins of spacecraft and sets up the environment so that you can build them quickly because digital twins are not a new thing. They've been around in the space for quite a while. If you build a gigantic multi-billion dollar satellite, you will make effectively a digital twin of it because what that lets you do is figure out are things working when it's in orbit. What does that normally mean? How do I fix it? You can run scenarios, you can forecast forwards. That's really important when you have a multi-billion dollar spacecraft. The challenge with miniaturized satellites is the risk to cost ratio is not quite the same. You can't spend the same amount of money that you have been in the past for these big systems on building a digital twin of a single spacecraft. The industry is kind of at a transition point where we're going from capability demonstrators proving that we can do really cool and amazing impactful things with these systems like helping manage water in the Murray Darling Basin better. You can't do that with one to three spacecraft. You need 100. It's at that point where it starts to make more sense to have these digital models. There's no support services in place to enable that at the moment. That's where we fit in at the center of your little diagram there of operations, space simulation and digital twins. Then we're also another application of what we do is AI. Self-driving cars, these days you don't train a self driving car to drive and stay on the road by giving it control of a real car hoping it doesn't run into a wall. What you do is you make a digital twin of that car. You give the control software or actually even the flight, you've got the computer control of that digital twin. You teach it to drive the map in that safe environment. That's what you can do with these sort of things as well. You can train ways to control your spacecraft now.

Moderator: Can you elaborate a little bit more in terms of the challenges this spacecraft might face during the launch and then when they're in orbit?

Chris: Yes I mean I can even go back up. I've got personal experience with this. Our first spacecraft that we helped build. The Buccaneer Risk Engagement mission that we did as part of UNSW Canberra with Defense Science Technology group. I was standing in to help operate that spacecraft one morning. Our lead engineer and our lead operator were on a plane and they're un-contactable. They say, "Chris, don't worry. It'll be easy. You just have to come in at 5 AM in the morning," which I wasn't too happy about, "Downlink the data, and everything will be fine as long as this one number doesn't come up." What you know? I go in at 5 AM, first time I'm doing this, downlink the data, and that number's come up. The spacecraft is in emergency mode. Off very little data, I have to figure out what's gone wrong. What had gone wrong was that the spacecraft was facing the wrong way. We had to turn it to face the sun. Power is a very important thing to manage on the spacecraft. If you think of your phone, your phone goes through a charge-discharge cycle, hopefully in a day. Hopefully, your phone's battery lasts a day. One of these satellites in low Earth orbit does a lap of the Earth every 90 odd minutes. That means it goes to a charge-discharge cycle every 90 minutes or every half of that. That wears the battery down, so you got to look out for the battery quite a lot. Here I was, with a battery warning, trying to figure out what was going on. What I didn't have at the time was a tool that could've told me, "Something's gone wrong but this is what's gone wrong," and help me figure out how to respond. There are a plethora of things that can go wrong, from parts breaking, say a reaction wheel. Reaction wheel is how you point to spacecraft. Essentially just a little wheel that spins up. Spacecraft have wheels. If one of them breaks, it means you can't point as well as you would. That's a problem again from a power perspective, but also means you might not be able to point as well as you need to see-- Say if you're trying to take a picture of something, you can't take a picture as reliably.

Moderator: Well, your solution must be really, really useful then without spending so much money and running into this kind of problems in the space. One of the questions that our audience has raised is how far away do you think you are before customer actually pay for the digital twin service? Maybe this is a good opportunity for you to talk about any work that you are doing for the clients at the moment as well.

Chris: Yes, definitely can. We actually have a mission analysis contract for the client. That mission analysis contract as part of it, they want to do something where they're developing AI algorithms to figure out when a camera is looking at something with both cloud and land. They want to do that so that they can tell another spacecraft when to turn it's camera on and off. Something, again I'll share my screen for a different thing. This is a little sneak peek inside the prototype. This is just a little video I made from it. Here, all you're seeing is the spacecraft in its little orbit line. What the client really cares about, when I zoom down here, here we go, is you see down in this corner, that's the view from the sensor. We can feed that data into their clients' flight computer. They can use their algorithms to actually start training their systems before it gets into space to see whether it's actually going to work. They can do this while flight computers also trying to manage things like the amount power it has available, because you'll see at the moment that that spacecraft is not pointing the sun. It's got all its systems on, which means it's using power. As I said, you've got to manage that battery. On top of that, part of this mission involves information keeping as well. Maybe Brenton can talk a bit more about some of the information aspects there.

Brenton: Yes, definitely. Many missions, they require the satellites to coordinate, so that could involve just separating or set distance apart. Sometimes that distance involves them separating across the whole globe, of a whole constellation. Think of that as a string of pearls.The way that is done is that usually there's active maneuvering involved and actually first establishing that formation or also maintaining it for the long-term, because even the slightest little touch like the Sun's rays actually pushes the satellite out of place. A lot of their control algorithms are written to maintain the formation, they have to be tested ideally before your launch. Most of these AI aspects involved in that as well. Some of the work I'm working on now actually involves training AI to keep a formation. It gets a lot more complex than that. That's a high level overview.

Moderator: How big is the market? How many satellites will benefit from this every year?

Chris: The miniaturized satellite sector currently is only valued in about $10 billion globally, with the total space market value about $340 billion. Saying that, the miniaturized satellite market has a compound annual growth rate of 22.2% versus 5% for the entire space industry. To put it in another way, miniaturized satellites are the things that are going to provide you with the data that helps you in your everyday life. The big satellite sector is really focused on exploration, the Moon and Mars sort of aspects. What that means is that, I think, 400 of these spacecrafts were launched last year. Then it's forecasted about 2030, there'll be about 6500 of these satellites launch in total. In terms of what's the value there? The value of the spacecraft varies a bit. It depends on what you're doing with it really and how you make it. You can put a price tag between $2 million to $10 million on a spacecraft, depending on if it's a once off, or if it's part of constellation of a hundred spacecraft. The benefit the digital twins is an end-to-end product. It helps you during your design phase to figure out what you should be building and whether it's going to work. It helps you when you actually start procuring items and testing. Testing for space systems is incredibly important. Normally, what groups do is environmental testing. That's what I like to call shake and bake. You put your spacecraft on a shaker table and you try and break it. You put it in on a thermal vacuum chamber and you heat it up and you cool it down. What's done not as much is your functional testing, and that's because it's hard, but it's also essential. When you have a project where you have a fixed deadline, so these systems are built for someone else's launch. Part of the reason why these systems are being built more often now is because launch costs have come down because you can share a rocket, like sharing an Uber. It means you're building for someone else's launch, it means that if there's any slip in your project, generally the first thing that's eaten up is testing, and particularly software testing. Having a platform that makes it as easy as possible to do that essential software testing, is one of the things that we do. Then, once you're in orbit, as you try and operate one spacecraft, that's fine. It's harder than you might think, but it's quite doable. When you have a 100 and you're having problems everyday that you've got to reverse and address quickly, that's where a system like ours really starts to come in to play, helping detect and resolve anomalies before they do damage to your spacecraft. This is all to help make sure that customers' systems provide the impact that they want.

Moderator: That will be a really, really big problem if the satellites have passed all the tests but couldn't really function in the space. Actually, this is relevant to one of the questions that the audience raised. Are there any regulations with other factors driving adoption of certain systems like yours to help reduce waste in the space?

Chris: It's a really good question actually. It's something that is both part of the conversation going on at the moment. I see Brenton has shared a picture of space debris. It's part of the conversations going on at the moment both nationally and globally, because, as we've talked about, the value rate of these systems, so the 10% dead on arrival rate and a 50% chance of a system's failure in the first four months, that doesn't necessarily mean that the mission doesn't work. It just means it doesn't deliver all of the capabilities it needs to. That is a decent amount of space debris, and so space is a global commons, just like international waters. It's also exposed the tragedy of this. One of the things that is part of what motivates us is to try and ensure that we develop these essential space capabilities that can actually do really amazing things for us. For example, if we could have had early fire detection system that was supported by space infrastructure to try and mitigate the impact of fires early this year, it would have changed everything. If that same system is also causing problems, that's something we want to try and avoid, and so it has to be a bit more focused on, how can we develop to space sustainably? To us, sustainable space development starts on the ground. It means making sure that systems are going to work or have the highest chance of working they can. In terms of what regulations are there, there are regulations around requirements for launch but those are mostly put in place or enforced by launch providers because if you have a spacecraft blow up in a rocket it's not a good thing. Particularly if you're ride sharing with a bunch of other people, everyone else would want to make sure that you're not going to blow up in your rocket. That comes back to the environmental testing I talked about earlier. In terms of host launch, there is a requirement for a 25 year lifetime. You have to demonstrate that your spacecraft will de-orbit in 25 years. That requirement is based on, when people weren't launching hundreds of spacecraft, as dare I say, it's starting to get outdated. The question needs to be asked, do we need to change that requirement? Do we need to put some more onus on the operators of these systems to make sure that they can de-orbit? If they are operating responsibly. Those conversations are happening but I don't think that those requirements are in place yet. They would benefit Space Service Australia.

Moderator: Yes, with the formation of the Australian Space Agency, it seems that space industry in Australia is getting bigger and bigger. Could you explain a little bit more? What is the biggest opportunity that the growing Australian Space industry has to offer for Space Services Australia?

Chris: Well, I think the-- I might rephrase it, what does the growing space industry have to offer Australia? It's not just Space Service Australia, and part of that goal is really to unlock the potential that space has for Australia. Think about it this way, as I said, one of these satellites does a lap of the earth every 90 minutes and every time it does the lap, the earth rotates slightly under it and so it sees something different. That means that with one spacecraft you can actually see quite a lot. What's normally done, is you can do what's called remote sensing, so remote sensing means you look down and take a picture and you do some analysis. That analysis can vary from looking at the water quality to looking at a farmer's land and helping figure out where needs are, where it needs to be fertilized more, and providing that so that we can make better use of our resources. Australia is a country that has a low population density, we are well educated and we're able to take advantage of all of the benefits that space has to offer. It makes a lot of sense. I think my answer to your question is that space has the potential to provide Australia with the food security that it needs, and how to better manage our resources and to communicate better. What Space Services Australia's mission is just to really enable all of that. We don't build spacecraft, we aim to help everyone else build spacecraft. We aim to help create that pipeline for the students who want to get into the space industry to not go overseas. They don't have to go overseas to make impact, they can create their own space companies just like we have and try and help solve real-world problems using space.

Moderator: Really building the space industry here in Australia locally without going overseas, that's great.

Chris: In fact, there's something that we didn't talk about in our presentation, that we are also establishing. We're actually establishing an initiative called space innovation lab where we plan to put the product that we're developing at the center to provide an environment where we can bring students and we can bring organizations, and connect them up with the industry to quickly develop and demonstrate those innovative space capabilities so that they can actually go out, and that's really to unlock that potential.

Moderator: Maybe go back to the very beginning. Tell us a little bit more about the satellites. Who are using those satellites? Why are the market get so big and even bigger in the future?

Chris: Yes, the users of the satellite or the people who are making them? It depends, so if you're-- You start a couple different ways. There are some people who build spacecraft and provide them to others to do innovative things, and there are others who build the spacecraft to do it themselves but it all comes back to, what's the use case? What problem are you solving? Generally, those problems are put up into three main areas. One, there is communications. Communications is one of the largest growth areas in the space industry and it's the reason why you see the growth in the miniaturized satellite sector. It's because you can make those constellations that Brenton was talking about and pass the information very quickly between them. What that means is that the information doesn't need to go up to the geo-stationary orbit and come back, which takes more time but can make a very quick and very secure route to the people who want to talk to each other. Then there's that remote sensing application where you're trying to get actionable business information about something that's happening on the ground. A good example, there's an initiative done by Geo-science Australia called Digital Earth Australia and they've taken the satellite imagery from some spacecraft that had been up in orbit for 30-odd years and overlaid all of that so that anyone can go look at that data, and try and figure out how to improve people's lives and so there's a great example that you can go and look out yourself, where they look at water quality. There's an algorithm that can look at the water quality of every water body over Australia for the past 30 years and we can figure out have we been managing water well, and what can we do in the future to manage it better. Then the last category is researchers. There's researchers trying to push the edge to figure out, how can we do all of this stuff better? They are testing new sensors, taking some of the risks that commercial operators can't.

Moderator: What do you think are the new emerging industries that the satellite are going to enable here in Australia?

Chris: Yes, do you want to have a go at that, Brenton?

Brenton: Yes, sure, so the new and emerging industries, well, space itself is a new emerging industry in Australia. I had a good conversation recently where they said Aus S pace is the only space company in Australia, but now they are plenty of startups based in Adelaide, Canberra, Sydney , and the rest of Australia as well. Space itself is an emerging industry in Australia, but it really enhances many other industries. For example it can increase the efficiency of agriculture by analyzing images of the earth for example. You can tell how healthy your crop is and also just other insights from space. One of the most useful things from space is the insights you can from being able to get a bird's eye view of the earth and from that data you can learn lots of new things. For example, you can track ships coming into and out of ports to help you manage that. Also another emerging industry is Internet of Things. Essentially, Internet of Things is where you have a bunch of physical things and they will be connected to the internet so that they can communicate with other things and the rest of the world, really. However, there are many locations around the world where there's not direct internet access, so there's not very good connectivity. We are seeing things like spacecrafts, for example, being used to connect things in the right areas, as well as giving people generally internet access. Say, for example, SpaceX, they've launched their Starlink constellation, and one of their missions is to connect everyone in the world with internet, particularly those who don't have access to any internet at the moment.

Chris: I guess beyond the space aspect, there's all the downstream and upstream jobs that will be created as well. At the moment, Australia is a net importer of space data, but there are people out there who also do stuff with the space data. You don't have to build your own spacecraft to start a business. You don't have to operate a spacecraft to be part of the space industry. You can be a downstream customer of that space data, and you add value to it by doing some processing and turning it into something new that creates benefit for someone else. Then there's the upstream side, so manufacturing. Actually, at UNSW Canberra, we build our own space parts. I mentioned on that video that the spacecraft that was featured was the first certified Australian made spacecraft. That was because the parts were manufactured here in Canberra. In fact, one of the spacecraft coming out in March, I think early next year, is Chassis 3D printed. New ways of advanced manufacturing is another area where Australia really has a role that it can play in the global space industry, not just in Australia. There's the bit that everyone notices. There's the satellites, there's the rockets, those are the sexy bits. Then there's all the support services out there as well that make the space industry possible in the States. We can have all of that too. That's where the jobs will be created as well, in the support services, in the advanced manufacturing, in the advanced analysis. Then we can translate those capabilities into other industries as well.

Moderator: What makes you excited about creating Space Services Australia?

Chris: I'm a firm advocate of practice what you preach, and I'm a firm STEM advocate. I routinely get up in front of school kids and talk about space. How it's amazing, and how we can solve problems on the ground that I care about. I would feel a bit disingenuous if I didn't try and have a go myself. Part of what motivates me, and what motivated me to stop doing this is to, not just inspire the next generation, but to actually try and make a change now. We can't always just push the problems down the line in my opinion to the next generation. We have to step up and try and solve problems. That's part of it. A little plug for the STEM stuff, next year I'm organizing a STEM park in Sydney for the 43rd Committee on Space Research, so if you're in the area, come check it out, but I won't talk about that too much .

Moderator: What's the name again?

Chris: That's COSPARK, Committee on Space Research. I'm happy to post a link on our LinkedIn page, which if you'd like to know more, and continue to hear about what we're doing, you should definitely check us out on LinkedIn. That's probably where we're most active. Brenton, what inspired you?

Brenton: Great question. I think the technology is really on the cusp of having great impact as well. Chris mentioned the impact, but there's so many things that this particular application can do, so many value propositions i t has - not just in enabling space capability and giving customers confidence that their space systems would work , but all the other parallel aspects that we can branch off into. There are plenty of many other industries, and the artificial intelligence aspect as well is really exciting. It can scale to many different things and it's just I just can't wait for what's to come.

Chris: We have an ambition, I should say. We're starting with space, but then we want to get into manufacturing. Then we want to combine those two things so that we can help support in orbit manufacturing. Give us 10 years and see where we're at then.

Moderator: Space manufacturing and education. That's a great combination. I love your ambition. Coming back to the product development, how far are you guys down the line in terms of developing the product. Is anyone actually using that, and how many more years do you guys need to have a fully functioning product to test all the satellites that are going to be launched into this sky?

Chris: At the moment where we're at is, we can do the digital twin simulations of spacecraft. We can construct those models where you've got all the different parts being controlled by the flight software. The challenge is that, at the moment, you really have to be myself or Brenton to do it. For our client, we provided a consulting service, but our real goal is to broaden the number of users who could actually do it. There's only so many Brentons and Chrises. Part of that video that I showed earlier of the prototype, is creating that usable user interface to actually make it so that a specialist doesn't have to be doing this, that people without that ... I'm losing count of how many years I've been making simulations of these things, but someone with less experience can put together a complex or even more complex simulation that I've made. Part of the way that we do that and the real challenge, I think, for us going forward, is that marketplace. Connecting of simulations with hardware is a lot of the time a case by case basis. There's lots of devil in the detail there. If we were to say, we'll do that all ourselves, we'd never get it done. By providing a platform where suppliers of components can build their digital models, and connect it up with their hardware, and then sell those digital models through that marketplace to people who like to build these spacecraft, whether that just be a student who is looking to very quickly make a spacecraft for their assignment, versus someone who is trying to deliver a commercial capability, that incentivizes those suppliers to start using that platform. Then that means that the people who want to build those, who actually want to build the spacecraft, can buy the parts, connect it up with the digital model, a plug and simulate way where they get the part, they plug it in, it's all ready to go. That's what the market place does. That's probably getting critical mass through that market place is going to be one of our challenges. In the meantime, we can build digital models and digital twin systems for particular customers in a boutique way. We're looking to have our base product to market ideally by early next year. It won't be all singing, all dancing. It won't do everything but it will start to let our people have a go. We're aiming that product to start with, at the educational market because it's a good place to start.

Brenton: To extend that as well, we've got a great team helping us develop this. We're also looking for people experienced with development. Five plus years' experience with a game development, to really help us take it to the next level. Also with that cloud deployment , as well. If you know anyone who has those skills, please tell them to reach out to us at brenton@spaceservicesaustralia.com.

Chris: That's a great point, Brenton, because making useful, clear, and intuitive UIs is not easy. That's where our development work really is at the moment. The simulation aspect; that's done. That's not a problem, but making it so that it's easy and intuitive to use for other people, is where the work really is.

Moderator: Say, after some time, you guys have developed this perfect product that allows people to do simulations, and people have found that something just doesn't really work during that simulation, what do they do? Do you guys have, say an advisory role in that?

Chris: This comes back to the SaaS-enabled marketplace model, where we provide an environment that companies can make individual components and sell those through there. What that means is that they can provide some of the support. We can provide support to the people who are making the parts. Part of the business model for that is to provide a certification service, where we come in and help make sure that everything is working properly as it should. Then that lets the provider of those parts charge a premium for them because they are certified. From the business perspective that's good for us. Then from a customer's perspective, it means that they know that they're going to get something that should be working. If their algorithm that they've developed to control their spacecraft is the root cause of the problem, it's better to find that out now, than in orbit. That's, again, the idea, but that doesn't mean that we couldn't come in to help try and solve those problems. That doesn't mean that other people couldn't make businesses around our product and helping others develop their systems. As I said, our goal is really to create a pipeline of opportunities for people. If someone else wants to start a business that's using our product to help other people build a spacecraft, more than supportive of that.

Moderator: SpaceX just recently launched successfully. Who are the players around here in Australia or New Zealand in the space sector that we should watch out for? Are you guys working with them?

Chris: I've got to make sure I don't forget anyone's name here. Fleet Space is definitely out there as a really great company that's been working in the IoT sector. They are building a constellation spacecraft for internet of Things. Myriota is another great company in a similar sort of space. Tyvak is a company that builds spacecrafts. Maybe I should have done this by the type of order as opposed to just the ones that come out of my head first, but we'll just continue on. Then you've got SkyKraft, which is another spin-out from UNSW Canberra. As well as, there's a component provider spin-out that will potentially be coming out soon as well, who will be a partner of ours. Then there are-- Oh, I 've had a mental blank.

Brenton: You should mention UNSW Canberra space themselves, which is the largest space engineering tech administration group in Australia. With at least two missions experience in space.

Chris: In fact, UNSW Canberra Space has a spacecraft in our Rocket Lab rocket right now, and it will be launched on June 11th, all things going well. We saw recently with SpaceX that launches can be delayed. On our first launch, I think it was delayed three nights in a row, which meant that our boss gave us pizza and beer three nights in a row. [laughs] There are benefits, there's a silver lining. If you want to watch that launch, then that would be great. UNSW Canberra Space definitely is doing some really cool stuff. Then there are other groups like Melbourne Space Program. We helped provide some support for Melbourne Space Program's first launch, which was successful, so congrats. That was last year, I think. Then, there are other groups that aren't necessarily launching spacecraft, but they're doing stuff with spacecraft data. HEO Robotics which is a spin-out from Sydney. They rent other people's spacecraft to do some really cool things. You don't even need to buy and build your own spacecraft, you can actually rent a spacecraft as well to provide the capabilities that you need, which is something that people might not have thought of before. Then there are the usual sort of players, all universities around Australia. GLA, anyway, for sure are doing stuff in space these days. There's Defense Science and Technology Group, the list goes on. Australia has a surprisingly large space industry. I've just mentioned the people building spacecraft. We're not even talking about all of the providers of what's called space situational awareness data. Looking up and trying to better understand what's out there, and where is it going and making sure that it doesn't hit each other. Avoiding collisions is a really important thing. For example, there's a group that runs the Desert Fireball Network. Originally they made that network, which is a series of cameras in the middle of the desert, to find meteorites. It looks up, and you take photos of meteorites. You figure out where they've landed, so you can go and collect them. They found they actually made a system that was really good at looking at spacecraft. There's those sort of companies and then there are other companies like Silentium. Silentium is actually an ON alumni. I think they were part of the first Accelerate Group to come through. They built passive radar systems. Those passive radar systems can be used, again, to listen for spacecraft, figure out where they are so that we can make sure that spacecraft don't run into each other. Just coming back to a common theme, the space industry isn't all just about satellites. It's about all the support that is there as well. The satellites have the bit that gets the most attention.

Moderator: Are you guys working with any of the people that you guys just mentioned?

Chris: We're definitely working with doing UNSW Canberra Space. Then we also have been talking to the likes of Fleet, but at the moment we're not working with them. As I said, our goal is to help the space industry in general here. As soon as we have a product that can help them, I'm sure we will be.

Moderator: One of the name that actually people asked in the Q and A forum is Rocket Lab. Do you guys work directly with rocket companies?

Chris: We don't work directly with rocket companies at the moment. What we do is we simulate the spacecraft, which is important after it's left the rocket. However, we have talked in the past with some of the people from Equatorial Launch Australia and Southern launch, who are two Australian startups looking to provide Launch Services from Australia. Then with our UNSW Canberra hats on, we've obviously done some work with Rocket Lab in the past with a spacecraft on a Rocket Lab rocket right now. Yes, at the moment we don't do work with launch providers. However, launch providers are a really important part of the space ecosystem. Not just because they get spacecraft to space, but they also can enforce that sustainable part of space. If they're not happy that the person that they're launching has demonstrated that they have made a spacecraft that's safe and that's going to work, and it has a, as I say, plan, then they don't have to launch. As part of a regulatory approach to sustainable space development, launch providers are a key part of that. That's where having our own launch providers in Australia would really help enable us to be a responsible space nation.

Moderator: Australia had a very long history in space, but a lot of countries are looking to access the space for the first time. What kind of opportunities are there to access those markets?

Chris: As in to help those other regions access space?

Moderator: Yes.

Chris: I think that's part of why Australia is seeing such growth in the space industry at the moment. I don't know if this is because everyone's reading the same market research reports, but Australia has been identified as one of the highest growth regions for the space sector. I think part of that is because of its geographic location, and its ability to provide some of those support services to our surrounding mates. For sure, establishing Australia as the go-to region for sustainable space development is, in part, how we're going to deliver on the Space Agency's goal of tripling the size of the space economy here in Australia by 2030.

Brenton: To expand on that a little bit, the space industry is very global by nature. For example, space was one of the few industries where the Russians and Americans collaborated during the Cold War. I think we've had probably close to over a hundred conversations with stakeholders from all over the world; USA, UK. Also, our product is quite easy to deliver globally because it's a cloud-based product. It will be quite easy for us to access the global market.

Moderator: Sounds great, a global market, I guess [crosstalk]

Chris: It does raise a fun bit of trivia.

Moderator: Go ahead.

Chris: You could ask the question of how do you get a spacecraft from Australia to somewhere else? For example, the US if you want to go for a launch, or even to New Zealand, how do we get a spacecraft from Australia to Rocket Lab in New Zealand? I always like this. We get the spacecraft a business class seat. It goes in a Pelican case, and we strap it down to its seat and it sits there, then its hand luggage. It turns out if you have a spacecraft in your hand luggage, you can also get a little security tag to get through security quickly too. I thought that was a fun little fact that I didn't know about.

Moderator: Have you gone through this process?

Chris: Unfortunately, I didn't get to take the business seat. This is why I'm a little jaded, but no.

Moderator: The satellite take the business seat, not the scientist. [laughter] I've got a question from the audience saying that, "Do you track constellations as well as the other satellites curling orbit to determine any risks to other spacecraft?"

Chris: One of our goals is to provide a digital twin of every spacecraft that's up there and ideally every bit of debris, and this is a little bit down the road, but we would like to help provide a space traffic management service for the globe, so that people who have their spacecraft, have their digital models, they log in, they do their operations, they'll plan their operations, and that forecasts out where they're going to be. Then we can help provide conjunction warnings. Conjunction warnings are, will a spacecraft get too close to another so that it has a risk of hitting each other? It's quite hard in low earth orbit because despite space looking very empty, it's really not, and particularly in low earth orbit, there's still an atmosphere there. It's very thin, but it's still there. That's the largest force on the spacecraft, aside from gravity. It also is variable, it changes quite a lot. There's a thing called space weather. There's weather in space and it's hard to predict weather on the ground. It's even harder predict it in space, and so spacecraft move around quite a lot. Part of both Brenton and I's background is understanding that interaction and making those predictions. We would really like to incorporate that into the product platform, but that's several steps into the future.

Brenton: Speaking of constellations and risk, another value proposition that we're investigating a little bit is the assessment of risk from insurance underwriters' point of view. We've had some conversations with insurance, and they too were challenged by the rise of new tri-satellites, because it's very new. There are processes that they used to assess the risk for geostationary communication satellites, don't quite apply to new tri-satellites. They're going through a bit of a shift in the industry as well as they try and disrupt the industry as well. We're interested in ways that we can help them assess the insurance risk of a satellite mission as another value proposition of our product.

Moderator: To get to the next steps, what kind of help do you guys need?

Chris: As Brenton mentioned at the moment, in fact, if you looked at our LinkedIn page, we're currently looking for someone on the business development side helping with that SaaS-enabled marketplace component. Then on the other side, a senior software developer to help our current team on delivering that product. In our presentation, we mentioned an ask looking to raise 700,000K, where currently, we've got some news in the pipeline about some funding support to go with that. That is another aspect; resources and people, which is probably pretty standard.

Moderator: Where can people find more information about you guys out there?

Chris: We have a website, spaceservicesaustralia.com, because ssa.com turns out three-letter websites. They're very expensive. I won't go into that story. Then on our LinkedIn page is another good way to contact us. You can contact myself or Brenton directly by Chris or Brenton @spaceservicesaustralia.com, or just more broadly info@spaceservicesaustralia.com

Moderator: When we're thinking about space, a very, very important part is probably the next generation. What would you encourage more people, especially the young kids to go into the space field to do what you guys are doing right now?

Chris: I would probably say, do what excites you. If you like, maths or you like playing with a ball rolling down the ramp, engineering is fine to do, but space isn't just about, and doesn't just need people who are good at maths and engineering. It also needs lawyers. Space law is a really important thing, and it'll be more important in the future as more and more people are using space. We need good communicators, people who can help spread the good word about space and talk about its benefits. We need people who want to get into government to help support space. I would say you can do whatever you want. There are opportunities to get into the space industry, regardless of the direction that you go. If you want to be like myself or Brenton, we both did engineering degrees, and then we did PhDs, but that isn't the only way. Do you have anything to add on it?

Brenton: The only thing I would add is that the timing is really good. Even when I finished my undergraduate degree back in 2013, there was next to no space jobs in Australia. There were very, very few, and very scarce. That is really changing now as the industry grows very rapidly. There's a lot of problems that the world is facing right now. There's a lot of scope to have impact if you want to pursue a career in space.

Chris: You can do it in Australia.

Moderator: That's awesome. We have around four minutes left. Last question, what's next for you guys, and what's next for Space Services Australia?

Chris: At the moment, as I said, there's some news in the pipeline. We are looking to scale up, and really accelerate some of our activities so that we can get that product to market by early next year, and establish Space Innovation Lab to start creating those experiences and pipelines into Australian space industry. I think you'll definitely be hearing more from us. If you have any insights, if you want to have a conversation, or if you'd like a job, definitely get in contact. Do you have any last words, Brenton?

Brenton: I just like to reiterate, if you're interested, contact us. We're always keen to have a conversation. It's a very exciting time as we look scale-up and grow.

Chris: Both us and the space industry in general. Oh, yes. There's a Calendly link.

Moderator: Last thing before we end the session, there is a way that you guys can reach out to Chris and Brenton by book a meeting with them at Calendly. Their Calendly link is calendly.com/spaceservicesaustralia. Thank you, everyone, for joining. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Brenton. You guys did a very awesome job pitching today and very best of luck with the future. Looking forward to it.

Brenton: Thank you

Chris: Thank you. It's been a great experience.

Brenton: Thanks, everyone.

Chris: Thanks.

Moderator: Thank you, everyone. [01:00:36] [END OF AUDIO]