Aerospace Futures 2018

Excited! That’s exactly how I felt hopping onto the bus yesterday for the Aerospace Futures Conference. We had a wonderful bus ride down to Canberra chatting with the new friends we made as well as watching Tom working on CAD for the rover for the majority of the trip. Having been working hard for the majority of the holidays to get the rover ready for the ERC next month, this trip to Canberra was going to be an opportunity to unwind, network and make new friends for all of us attending.

The Australian National University (ANU) Launch Night yesterday, held in the prestigious Parliament House, was a fantastic way to get the Aerospace Futures started. We were given an amazing chance to network with student delegates with the same excitement, interests and passion as us. A lot of new names to remember for sure.

This morning commenced with the introduction presentation from Ed Muthiah Chair of the Aerospace Futures conference, and the keynote speakers Micheal Frater and Russell Boyce from UNSW Canberra. They made it evident that the space industry is currently going through a paradigm shift, heading from the development of large, expensive space devices that require a long lead-time to the miniaturisation of satellites; meaning more affordability, accessibility and rapid development. There is also a much higher tolerance for risk, as, in fact, only about 30% of the micro-satellites launched are successful.

The development of the space industry doesn’t just mean we’ll learn more about the mysteries of the universe, that’s just one part (the best part in my personal opinion), but through the use of micro-satellites, we can gather data to help emergency situations, agriculture monitoring, defence and security measuring including maritime monitoring. It fascinates me that this is just the tip of the iceberg, there are much more industries that can greatly benefit from the continued development of our space capabilities in Australia.  Who knows what new skills and fields can emerge as a result!

At the morning tea, I met Peter, a Bachelor of Science and Physics student from ANU. I learnt from him that there are 5 different categories of supernova and that he was researching and monitoring a new supernova at the moment. A new supernova that was exhibiting the behaviours of three of those categories yet, not exactly fitting into one. It was awesome learning and hearing more about what he loved and frankly, I loved it too.

The rest of the day was filled with presentations and stalls from Boeing, Myriota, Gilmore space, VIC government and so much more! The Aerospace Futures conference really provides a wonderful opportunity to youth just starting out their careers to expand their horizons. We were given an insight from employers that not only are they looking for academic and technical abilities but they are strongly eager to employ undergraduates who have passion and would make a perfect fit into the cultural aspects of the company. One of the best ways to do this is by getting hands-on experience at your university by building, breaking and improving actual physical projects. I strongly believe that student societies like BLUEsat are some of the best ways of going about doing this.

During an interview at the Aerospace Future Conference Jason Held from Sabre Astronautics explained that we don’t need to go to America to get involved and get a job in the aerospace industry, we can now do it here! And to me that is fantastic. I’m sure that many young people a few years ago, me included, previously believed that we need to go overseas to find employment in the aerospace sector where our passion lies.  But now with the formation of the Australian Space Agency, the drive for the Australian Aerospace sector has significantly increased and will definitely continue to improve.

Not only was it an awesome experience talking to industry, it was fun talking to other students about all the cool space projects that we at BLUEsat work on, as well as learning about what they do. We talked to Dawn Hui the Co-president from Sydney Women in Aerospace, a University of Sydney society and Gavan Huang the president from Professional Aeronautics and Astronautics Society at the University of Technology Sydney just to name a few. I can’t wait to find out who I’ll meet over the next few days, and am really looking forward to it!

Tune in tomorrow for Thomas’s update about day 2 of the Aerospace Futures Conference!