I'm at the University of Western Australia with a video that's a little bit different. Last week the
university administration team gave me a call and said "Hi James, we've got the Head of the
Australian Space Agency coming over and we want you to give them an interview". So, of course,
I said "Yes!". I've been a fan of the agency since the start of 2017, when it was announced,
and I did have a few questions that I really wanted answered. As it turns, out Enrico Palermo
is a UWA alumni and, after graduating, he went overseas to eventually work his way up to become
the Chief Operating Officer at Virgin Galactic before being called back home to Australia
to begin work with our Agency at the start of 2021. Coming up who is this guy? What is he doing
with our space agency? And, what does this mean for Australia? Without further ado here's Enrico.
[James] - So, Enrico congratulations! You've gone off the United States, done us proud over there,
while you were gone Australia got ourselves a space agency, finally, and now you're back to
lead it. But to start off with, we're at the Ezone building at the University of Western Australia;
a university which both yourself as well as the previous head of the Australian Space Agency,
Dr Megan Clark, our alumni of. To kick us off then, what is it about Perth and, in particular,
UWA which generates leaders in space? [Enrico] - I think while the university has
generated leaders, not just in space but but other functions, are sort of stemmed from a WA spirit,
you know? We're a state, and there's been interesting discussions in last
few days where people talked about an air gap with the rest of the country, and I think,
as a result of that, you have a need to sort of 'punch above your weight' in whatever discipline
you're in and, I think, that that's a key part of it. I've had great supervisors and mentors,
and who some still obviously are at the university today, and I'm indebted to their leadership and
guidance as well, so I think a mixture of a few things including the the academic stuff.
[James] - So obviously you have a very strong technical background,
but what attracted you more towards the leadership roles within these companies?
[Enrico] - Throughout my time at UWA I focused on pretty diverse internships. So, as much as
I love Engineering and Physics, one internship that actually was quite foundational for me was
working at the CSPB [Chemical] plant with Arthur Anderson, doing an ERP implementation, so
totally outside what I was was learning here at UWA. And I've always had an ethos of of say
'yes' to everything. And it's interesting too with the push for 'micro credentialing'. I remember,
so my wife studied at UWA she did a Bachelor in Commerce with a minor in business law, and I'd
sneak into her business law lectures. To learn right? And so in some ways that was, you know,
micro credentialing in a way and so picking up little tidbits. In my maths, you know, big focus
for me was investment science. So that was really operations research, applied maths, and investment
science. So that was very important late in my career for financial analysis, business modeling,
for example. So, although my course was very technical I tried to supplement it with things
a lot along the way. And projects like formula SAE are incredible projects. I was proud to be
part of the founding team in 2001 and then was the engine team lead in 2002. And so
there you have, a you know and the team here knows, you have a real deadline you have a
real budget you have a multi-disciplinary team that needs to needs to come together
to have success; and that mirrors real life. [James] - You're now in a unique position as
the head of the world's youngest space agency to set up literally whatever sort of culture you
want. What is the culture that you're trying to create with the Australian Space Agency. You know,
we are different from a traditional space agency like a NASA and ESA. We have a very much industry
growth mandate from from government, versus a you know big R&D budget, big R&D focus. We are still,
very much, a startup organization so you know we're quite small which means we can accelerate to
different opportunities quickly, and I love that it's the exciting phase of an organization. I've
obviously seen that phase up to more operational stages. Yeah, so I think diversity, inclusion,
sort of nimble, and creative in in what we're doing, and then, you know, very very technical
focus because you know we're our space agency. [James] - Fantastic yeah, and so what aspects
have you taken from your private space or just private industry days, and which ones are from
say other space agencies, versus what is just homegrown Australian spirit? Where
have you grabbed your different inspirations from? [Enrico] - Yeah, so from my background perspective
a big focus of the Australian Government right now is manufacturing, you may have seen the the model
manufacturing strategy, so I bring experience in in Aerospace manufacturing startups. The other big
focus is there is incredible small enterprises around Australia, including here in Perth,
and I'm meeting I think like 18 this afternoon, that are innovating particular technology in
space - whether it's payloads whether it's quantum sensing a whole bunch of things - but
how do we scale those organizations? And, so I'm fortunate to bring experienced scaling businesses,
bringing investment in, what is what is that magic formula to get from that low tier or early
technology concept into something operational? So, my background and other members of the team bring
that and I think that's really really important. [James] - Now we've seen it from a lot of media
releases and statements: really exciting stuff about Australia doing collaborations with NASA.
Now, can I hear from you? We are not trying to compete with NASA that's
right? We are collaborating. What does that collaboration look like?
[Enrico] - Our partnership and collaboration NASA clearly goes back to the Apollo days, and before,
with with the the Deep Space Complex and dishes here in Western Australia and around around the
country. And we've continued that and we've had great success in that collaboration. So
I'd say beyond that the latest collaboration is as part of NASA's Moon-to-Mars program. And
it's incredibly exciting, it's one of the flagship programs of the Australian Space Agency. And it's
not just technical, we are one of the founding signatories to what's called the Artemis Accords
and that's really unique because Australia is the only signatory to both the Moon treaty
and the Artemis accords. I think there's a real opportunity for Australia to lead the
discussion about how we responsibly use space and the moon and other areas. And so the Moon-to-Mars
program is a $150 million (AUD) Australian Government program to partner on Moon-to-Mars.
But importantly, it looks at the moon program is costing a lot more than 150 million dollars
but this is like our strategy, and I'll talk about a strategy, it ties to competitive strengths that
Australia has today from industries that exist or space in space technology exists. So just
one example we're looking at what's called the trailblazer program, is what we call foundation
services, clearly Australia is a world leader in providing the services and infrastructure and
logistics around remote operations and and we're really excited to see how to contribute to that.
[James] - These all sound like really amazing initiatives, but you said earlier you have $150
million (AUD) to support the NASA Moon-and-Mars program, you've got a $50 million (AUD) defense
investment for satellite communications. A pretty good weather satellite will cost you
about $500 million (AUD) to $1 billion (AUD). Obviously you're trying to achieve a huge
amount more than just a weather satellite for a lot less money than that. How does that work?
[Enrico] - We're only two and a half years old and the focus for the first two and a half years
was was building the strategy, developing the ecosystem, reaching out to Australia about this
opportunity. So we'll work with government over time to to look at the funding and structure for
future programs. Importantly we've delivered on programs such as the space infrastructure fund.
So where can government take very targeted investments, like the $6 million (AUD) we put into
the mission control center in Adelaide, that can serve many of the universities and institutions
that are launching satellites. If they all had to invest in their own mission control center
they probably wouldn't get off the ground. So we're making very targeted investments to
build the infrastructure base, and that's an important role government has to play.
And then we also have the International Space Initiative which is about collaboration with
space agencies around the world, and those those are active. Since the formation of the
agency there's been about, if I include the SKA, now over $1 billion (AUD) investment,
in space in Australia, but $700 million (AUD) excluding SKA, so I think that's a signal.
And on top of that what's really interesting, and we track this as a metric of our success,
is how much total inbound investment is coming into the sector and we're now tracking well over
$2 billion (AUD) investment, both private and public, into the sector. And that's a
real leading indicator for me that not just jobs growth, which is obviously our big mandate, but
just innovations going to come and follow that. [James] - So you're really here to enable
other groups to to do big things in space. [Enrico] - Exactly, through the roadmaps
that's how we tell that story so we publish road maps for our key priority areas, the first ones
for communications and absolutely optical comms quantum communications ground stations are a key
to that, and we are on track very busily working on the remaining six road maps.
[James] - You talk about how we make it easier for Australian groups, such as you mentioned Curtin
with their cubesats, and make it easy for them to do launches overseas. Have you had thoughts about
who the provider will be for Australian launches? So obviously if we've got satellite missions
coming up and we have a rover mission actually going to the moon we'll have to launch it somehow.
Is that domestically or is that internationally? [Enrico] - So one of the the key priority areas
in this civil space strategy is access to space and that includes technologies to get from ground
to space but also in orbit -and actually some australians working on some some neat in-orbit
propulsion technologies and other things that are important for access to continue access space - so
I'd say when the agency was formed there was probably skepticism about the the role
launch would play but we are now seeing a lot of investment and encouragement from across industry
and government to develop domestic launch capabilities. So there's various entities
we're working with for launch facilities. So the launch site but also rocket development. I think
over time we will see domestic launches but we'll see probably international launch companies coming
to Australia as well. So it's going to be driven by the market. They need to be safe,
need to be responsible, need to hit a price point most likely for that for their payload
configuration. But I think if you look at the projections around the number of satellites
that may be launched in constellation there's definitely demand to to service that over time.
[James] - So you'd be happy to see an international space company like SpaceX
or Virgin coming to Australia setting up corporations here and launching from my
territory or would you prefer to send it over to them with their already established facilities?
[Enrico] - I don't think it's a it's a preference either or. I think if we want
to drive inbound investment into the sector and growth of jobs in Australia and, more than that,
inspire the nation. And space has absolute the highest incredible capability to inspire.
[James] - What programs is the Australian Space Agency doing
to encourage that more outreach side of things? [Enrico] - Inspire is one of four pillars of the
agency built in the strategy. So it's built into our DNA. One of the things we're responsible for,
one of our flagship programs, is what we call the Australian Space Discovery Center. It's at
lot 14 in Adelaide at our headquarters. We just opened to the public two weeks ago, fifth of May,
and this is an immersive interactive hands-on exhibit where you can importantly understand
Australia's role in space. So it's not telling NASA and ESA stories, necessarily,
it's telling the Australian story. Where are our unique strengths? Throughout the facility
we have bios of Australians that are innovating around the world in space and so we're telling
that story. We have the talent to to do this. [James] - For yourself when your career pathway
into space was do your degree here then joined the International Space University over in Europe
and then you worked in UK and in the US. Is that the way to get into space in Australia?
Do you have to go overseas in order to do it? [Enrico] - No, not anymore. And even probably
when I left Australia not necessarily. I had a particular penchant for human space
flight and definitely at that point in time, probably still today, that would be the case.
Across our seven priority areas there are companies screaming out for systems engineers,
engineers, designers, to execute their business plans. So I think you can now
have great opportunities for for a space career here in Australia. Right now our
our missions are not at the scale of what you may see overseas but we're also in a neat phase of
quick innovation rapid innovation and as the investment dollars from private sector come
in I think it's gonna it's gonna grow fast. [James] - Huge thank you to Enrico and his
team for taking the time out to talk with us. I'm confident that the Australian Space Agency
is in safe hands. Next episode we're going 'walk about' to begin a brand new series on Australian
Engineering. Until then this has been James Dingley from the Atomic Frontier. Keep Looking Up.