Welcome, everyone.
And thank you all for coming today
to this exciting launch of InSpace.
Before we start, I'd like to acknowledge and celebrate
the first Australians, on whose traditional lands
we meet this morning, and pay my respects to elders
past, present, and emerging.
I'd like to acknowledge many of the senators and members
of Parliament who are taking time out of what we know
is a very busy schedule here.
And I'm very pleased to welcome Senator Fawcett, Senator Carr,
Senator Pratt, Richard Marles MP, Nick Champion MP, Senator
Smith, Senator Patrick, and Susan Templeton MP.
Thank you all for joining us.
Distinguished guests, colleagues,
and friends, special welcome to Minister Karen Andrews,
Minister of Industry, Science, and Technology
for being here today to officially launch the ANU
Institute for Space [? InSpace. ?]
Minister Andrews continues to be a strong supporter
of everything science, technology, and research
at ANU, and indeed across the sector.
And we very much appreciate your support.
I'd also like to welcome our other speakers today.
Professor Anna Moore, director of our new
ANU Institute for Space, and she is also
the director of Advanced Instrumentation and Technology
Center, one of the crown jewels of the Australian technology
scene, which we host up at Mount Stromlo.
Mr. James Caruso, the US Charge d'Affaires.
Great to have you here today.
And Mr. Valentin Merino Villeneuve,
the head of Airbus Defense and Space Australasia.
Thank you, wherever you are.
There we go.
As Australia's National University,
ANU has a unique and important role in policymaking, research,
and in innovation.
And so we're trying to think outside the box of how
to support Australia's agenda.
We have had established excellence
in space technology, research and development, for decades.
And we want to leverage that for the space industry
for Australia to grow and prosper in the years
and decades to come.
Our new Institute will be the front door to space activities
and capabilities across the university,
including technology research, development, science missions,
space test facilities, commercial space
law, and business and finance incentives relating to space.
Really everything you can imagine.
And it's not just for ANU.
It is for the nation.
It will drive co-investment with industry and government
partners and focus on cross-disciplinary projects
and initiatives to support the Australian space business
development.
InSpace will bring together the best and brightest
from ANU and the globe to solve the hard problems that
need to be solved if we're going to get a space industry up
and going here in Australia.
This new Institute builds on our commitment
to establish institutes of innovation that deliver world
class research outcomes and impact for government,
for civil society, and the private sector.
Without further ado, I'd like to invite
Minister Andrews to speak.
Thank you, Karen.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you very much, Professor Schmidt,
for the opportunity to be here this morning
and for your very kind introduction.
Can I also acknowledge all of the very distinguished guests
who are here today, and my parliamentary colleagues,
and in fact everyone who has come along today
to support the ANU, to support the space industry,
and of course, to support InSpace.
Clearly the space industry in Australia is a growing sector.
And you can just sense the excitement
from not only our young people, but from academia,
from industry, in the potential that the space industry
has to offer to Australia.
So I'm delighted with the work that the ANU has done and will
continue to do in this sector.
Now, the coalition government committed $41 million
to establish the Australian Space Agency.
And since that time, professor Megan Clark
has certainly hit the ground running to promote all things
space here in Australia.
But if we are to grow the space sector, which currently sits
at about $3.9 billion in Australia
and employs about 10,000 people to what we are projecting
will be a $12 billion industry by 2030
and employing some 20,000 people,
it's essential that we engage academia and the business
sector to jointly work together to make sure
that we are innovating, that we are conducting
appropriate research and development to build
and strengthen that sector.
InSpace has a unique opportunity to be
part of the growth of the sector here in Australia.
And I'm very confident that ANU will continue
to take a leading role.
I'm very supportive and very appreciative
of a industry who is already engaged.
And I know that together the ANU and business will certainly be
kicking some goals into space.
Congratulations on the work that you have done so far.
I wish you all the very best for the future,
and I'm delighted that I'm part of the journey starting here
today.
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you, Minister Andrews.
And indeed, we look forward to taking this journey together,
and with many of the great guests here.
Without further ado, I'd like to invite
Professor Anna Moore to speak.
We recruited Anna from Caltech.
Most of you will know that as a home of JPL,
although she worked in the astronomy department there.
She has a long history here in Australia.
It is great to have her back leading not just space,
but all of our instrumentation here at ANU, where
we are truly a world leader.
Anna?
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you, everyone.
It's a great honor to be director
of the ANU Institute for Space.
I'm very grateful to Brian and the ANU leadership
for their support and vision in setting up this Institute.
So the goals of InSpace are ambitious.
We will be tapping into the talent
across the whole university, from physics and astronomy--
my own area-- medicine, engineering, earth sciences,
all the way to law, policy, and economics and business.
The common theme to any of our programs
is that they will be transformative.
That is the only requirement.
We are working with our industrial partners
and our international collaborators
on a range of exciting projects.
And they will be announced as they come online during 2019
and onwards.
ANU's mission is to be the leader in Australia
and to change the world.
And I am very confident that InSpace
will enable that vision and that mission
in the area of Australian space.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you, Anna.
And your intellectual leadership is
exactly what we need to help Australia
achieve what its goals are.
And we really appreciate you being
prepared to step up to what is incredibly challenging.
And we hope we roll with huge opportunities
along with the challenges.
It is, as we have noted, an international endeavor.
And so it's great to have two of our international
representatives here.
And so first I'm going to have Mr. James Caruso,
Charge d'Affaires of the US embassy
here in Canberra to come up and address us all.
Thank you, [? Jim. ?]
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you, Brian.
Great to see so many people out here for something like this.
I'm a child of the '60s, sitting in my cardboard space capsule,
watching the launch at 6:00 in the morning,
thinking I was there.
This was a time that instilled confidence and hope
in my generation.
And now we're in a new generation, where companies
like SpaceX and Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are going
inspire the next generation to say, what can I
do in this new field where launch is cheaper and more
possible?
Where CubeSats can do things no one ever dreamed of.
And I'm so pleased that Australia,
just in the past year, set up a space agency, and now
this great InSpace effort, which is going
to take fields across human endeavor to see
what can we do in space.
And the United States reaches out
and wants to work with Australia across all this.
We're having our first bilateral space dialogue
the end of the year, which is going
to look at this on a government to government basis.
And I hope university to university,
we can do more together as well.
My embassy here is anxious to work
with anyone who wants to about how we can do more together.
It's an exciting time.
I envy all you people younger than 30
that can see this as a future.
And I wish you all the best of luck at InSpace.
And off we go to the moon.
Thank you.
Oh, and first I have to introduce my colleague,
Mr. Villeneuve from Airbus.
Please.
[APPLAUSE]
Good morning, everybody, distinguished minister,
senators.
Thank you for bringing me here as a industry space
representative.
I have to say, there is no single day
when I'm not talking about space, spatial startups, launch
with my Australian colleagues, Australian partners,
Australian customers.
Something is going on in this country.
Defense Department is investing $1 billion
per year in 10 years.
There is a very special Australian Space Agency
created on the 1st of July.
It's the fastest growing space startup economy
in the world per capita, with 85 startups being
created in two years.
So I think-- what I always say to my European colleagues
is, space is not a [INAUDIBLE] word in Australia anymore.
Something is happening.
We need to be here.
So I truly welcome the InSpace Institute, Innovation Institute
initiative.
It is the right thing to do to bring everything
under one roof, to actually give us a place to go,
to actually talk with academia, and to hopefully
create the future of the space [? hovering ?]
capability of Australia under one roof, together with you.
We've got-- I truly believe we are walking the talk when
I say that not only we are an industry based on cooperation,
but we are cooperating with Australia.
We are the first one signing an agreement
with the space agency.
We are the first one investing in the SmartSat CRC.
We are going to launch our high altitude satellite here
in West Australia at the end of November.
We're really trying to find the good connections with you.
So really excited about what you're doing.
Congratulations, Anna.
It's been a long process, even the last couple of years.
But that's going to be, I think, the beginning of a truly
great story for Australia.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you, Valentin.
And I can certainly say it's been a pleasure working
with Airbus over the last couple of years,
even before we knew we had a space agency.
You've really been highly engaged.
We have a whole bunch of highly engaged people here, people
from all sides of the equation of what the Australian Space
Agency is going to do.
I encourage you to take a little bit of time to talk.
I'm incredibly encouraged by having both sides of Parliament
here today.
To thrive, we're going to need a decade long plan.
And I am really pleased to see that Australia
is coming together.
And ANU will be there to help deliver.
I look forward to hearing everyone's ideas.
As Anna said, we need to make sure we're transformative.
So think big.
And we'll listen.
Thank you all for coming.
I encourage you to have some refreshments,
and look forward to seeing around, and making
the big leaps forward in the years to come.
Thank you all.
[APPLAUSE]