Stars align as international astronauts and NASA take on WA Space Conference

The stars have aligned for WA’s nascent space industry, with industry heavyweights from more than 20 countries descending on Perth for the inaugural Space Week.

Headlined by the Indo-Pacific Space and Earth Conference and the 30th Asia-Pacific Regional Space Agency Forum, the five-day event held at Crown Perth features representatives from NASA, the Japan Space Exploration Agency and SIA India, among other international space agencies.

Also adding star power are a number of astronauts, including Australia’s Katherine Bennell-Pegg, Japanese national hero Koichi Wakata, who has logged more than 500 days in space, and Canadian astronaut, Dr Shawna Pandya.

NASA program manager for small spacecraft technology Roger Hunter hoped WA Space Week would foster collaboration to meet the sector’s “future science and exploration needs”.

“I think Western Australia could also be a participant in that, in working with NASA to help us resolve some of those problems,” Mr Hunter told The West Australian.

Mr Hunter, who was also program manager for Kepler, NASA’s search for habitable planets in the universe, said WA’s resource sector gives the State a huge advantage as it seeks a bigger slice of the trillion-dollar space industry pie.

“NASA is working on basically using more automation, more artificial intelligence, in helping us conduct some of our missions, and obviously remote operations is part and parcel of that,” Mr Hunter said.

“Why can’t we take some of the lessons learned from you guys in remote operations that you’ve been conducting in the mining industry, apply it to space?”

Dr Pandya will become the fourth Canadian woman in space, having booked a seat on Virgin Galactic’s new Delta-class spacecraft in 2026, where she plans to conduct groundbreaking medical research.

Attending WA Space Week will also give her the chance to tour the world-leading Lions Eye Institute while in Perth, and Dr Pandya hopes it will benefit ongoing research, such as that into the eye condition spaceflight associated neuro-ocular syndrome, which could impact astronauts on long-duration space flights, like any future mission to Mars.

Dr Pandya is an expert in emergency medicine, but applying that knowledge in space is not as dramatic as Hollywood movies such as Gravity would have you believe.

“A lot of (my preparation) is driven by what has happened in space historically, which, luckily, tends to be the annoying things, not the life threatening things, so skin irritation or congestion or insomnia,” Dr Pandya said.

The State Government opened the inaugural WA Space Week on Tuesday with a $28.5 million funding commitment aimed at unravelling the mysteries of the universe and solving a significant terrestrial problem.

In announcing the new funding on Tuesday, Science Minister Stephen Dawson said the Government’s mission was to convince these international visitors that WA was the “place for space”.

Mr Dawson committed $25 million over five years to the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, and $3.5 million to WA-based space company LatConnect 60 to build a satellite assembly facility in the State.