Home to the national space agency and more than 100 space companies and organisations, South Australia is playing a pivotal role as Australia ramps up its efforts in the space race.
Lot Fourteen, an innovation district for future-thinking industries in Adelaide’s CBD, houses the Australian Space Agency and Mission Control Centre, along with multinationals and a number of pioneering space startups and businesses. In 2021 the announcement that a satellite, to be built at Lot Fourteen by resident startups and research partners, would be the first to be put into space by an Australian state government, solidified South Australia’s commitment to the industry.
Lot Fourteen. Image courtesy of Lot Fourteen.
South Australia’s development as a pioneer of space technologies is governed by the state’s Space Sector Strategy, which supports the Australian Space Agency’s goal of tripling the national space industry’s GDP contribution to $12 billion a year and creating an additional 20,000 jobs by 2030.
The growing space industry in South Australia has proven a major drawcard for attracting young, global talent to the state, including Sakshi Goel and Samuel Webster.
Unimaginable opportunity
Sakshi Goel wasn’t sure what industry she’d end up working in after she graduated from the University in Wollongong with a degree in information technology in 2019. What she did know was that she wanted to live somewhere where she could enjoy a good quality of life, make the most of nature and be close to a beautiful beach. On the advice of a family friend, she decided to move to Adelaide, despite never having visited the city.
Sakshi Goel, web application engineer at Myriota. Photo courtesy of Myriota.
After arriving in South Australia, Goel quickly realised that Adelaide was a lot more than just a liveable place to call home – it was also a burgeoning tech hub, brimming with career opportunities. “People [in South Australia] are working to build new technologies that have never been seen before,” says Goel, who grew up in India. “There are so many opportunities here and so many things happening that I never would have thought about.”
New to the workforce, Goel was lucky enough to find her first role in the highly competitive space technology industry. She is now a web application engineer at Myriota, a company helping keep cattle fed and water sources healthy anywhere in the world through its ground-breaking connectivity.
Goel’s work focuses on continuously improving the internal applications that Myriota’s customers use to connect directly to satellites – and she loves it. “Honestly, I can say that everything I say [at work] is heard, valued and appreciated,” she says. “It’s very rewarding for me.”
An offer too good to refuse
After graduating from Monash University in 2006 with a BSc in astrophysics, Samuel Webster left Australia. “There weren’t a whole lot of career options at the time,” he says. He spent 15 years in Germany, studying and working in the rocket industry, and wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to find comparable work back home.
But now, as the Australian space sector booms in South Australia, Webster is living and working in Adelaide, as an assistant director on the Moon to Mars program at the Australian Space Agency. It’s his job to make sure things keep moving smoothly towards the agency’s plan of delivering a 20kg rover to the moon’s surface by 2026.
Samuel Webster, assistant director to the Australian Space Agency’s Moon to Mars program, with NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
Webster says it’s a dream role as he transitions from work in rocketry to robotics.
But it’s not just work that has him feeling thankful to be back home in Australia – he also appreciates the lifestyle he enjoys in Adelaide, far from the harsh European winters of Berlin.
“It’s great to be able to walk into town and there are local shops all around me,” he says. “That was something I thought I’d be missing from Europe. I don’t have to drive to the shop or to get a coffee. I really love the mobility in the central part of Adelaide.”
After a year in South Australia, Webster has noticed that he’s not the only person who has been drawn to Adelaide by a career opportunity too good to pass up. “Quite a number of my colleagues have moved from elsewhere in Australia, or internationally, and found themselves in Adelaide,” he says. “I honestly didn’t think I’d be able to be part of the space industry in Australia. It’s still very young, but it’s growing and will continue to grow.”
Are you ready to find your new state of mind? Relocate your potential to South Australia.
