Space and Resources Director at AROSE

What is your role on the Trailblazer Team?

I’m focused on learning more about the considerations the rover team are making in their design, connecting with some of our new partners, particularly those within the resources sector. I’m passionate about bringing the STEM program to life as well as connecting to wider industry executives across the nation.

What is your background Michelle, and how did it bring you to AROSE?

I come from a mining background, having spent 3 decades working around mines, in technology, commercial and strategy roles. Most recently prior to joining AROSE, I was leading the technology development group at a large global miner. This group was focused on connecting to the technology sector globally, other mining companies, the internal technology group and the companies study team – all in order to create the next generation mine blueprint. This blueprint laid out the plan for the build of South 32’s new mines and has helped me in thinking about where to next by connecting mining and space.

It is this work in mining that has enabled the build of a resources advisory board at AROSE which is set up to bring innovative minds from the mining sector into the rover design.

What do you love most about working on the AROSE Lunar Rover project?

This has to be one of the most inspirational projects I’ve ever worked on. I would have to say the STEM work is the area I love the most. I’m leading the Milo initiative which is about bringing the tertiary and early stage grads into a lunar mission not dissimilar to the rover. This is enabling 220 people across Australia to also build their robotic mission design for discovery of water ice.

What is your favourite thing in space, and why?

I must admit I love looking up at the Moon now thinking about a future where our rover will be up there, an Australian first!

Program Coordinator at Joseph Banks Secondary College

What is your role on the Trailblazer Team?

I lead the development of AROSE’s STEM strategy, as an education secondee, engaging with industry and education to facilitate discussions about the STEM pipeline, from primary-aged children to young adults entering the workforce.

I led the creation of a national STEM coalition from industry and education who meet regularly to explore ways to raise awareness of STEM, and to look at ways we can collaborate to improve outcomes for young people in STEM pathways and build the workforce of the future.

What is your background Claire, and how did it bring you to AROSE?

My background is as an English teacher and so my route to the space sector is perhaps unusual. I am lucky to work at Joseph Banks Secondary College, a forward-thinking school that has a clear vision for the future and understands the importance of STEM and the space sector.

Two years ago I attended an Australian Space Forum held in Adelaide and I realised the huge array of opportunities available for young people in both STEM and the space sector.

Excitingly, Joseph Banks Secondary College is soon to open the Western Australian Space Science Education Centre (WASSEC). As a resource for the state, and students across Western Australia, WASSEC is a purpose-built facility that provides students with hands-on STEM learning experiences, including a simulated Mars surface, specialist facilities to perform space science experiments, as well as technology that provides a mission control experience.

What do you love most about working on the AROSE Lunar Rover project?

Inspiring young people to follow careers in STEM and the space sector is an important objective of the Trailblazer program and a key pillar for AROSE.

This project is cutting-edge and that is exciting for young people. I think this project demonstrates that space is for everyone. The future of space is exciting and accessible.

This project has enabled me to develop my strategic leadership skills and work with a range of people from different industries. Working in a STEM focused school at Joseph Banks Secondary College and supporting STEM in industry with AROSE, is a unique opportunity.

What is your favourite thing in space, and why?

STEM is all encompassing. It helps us to understand the world around us. STEM is important for the future and for sustainability. I like that STEM is so varied, and this is what makes it interesting. It is about the intersection of creativity and science.

Senior Engineer and Project Manager, Nova Systems. Based in South Australia.

What is your role on the Trailblazer Team?

The team at Nova Systems is driving the systems engineering, safety mission assurance and AIT (Assembly Integration & Test) for the Lunar Rover to make sure it’s going to do its job and survive the Moon’s severe environmental conditions. We’ve designed this rover from scratch using input from companies around Australia to help us refine and come up with the final design.

What is your background Sarah, and how did it bring you to AROSE?

I have been involved with many complex defence, Space and civil programs, including the JAXA Hayabusa 1 Spacecraft re-entry, hypersonic rocket launches, Woomera Test Range trials, the Hunter Class Frigate Program and as Industry Director at SmartSat CRC which is Australia’s largest space research centre.

Being part of AROSE and the Lunar Rover Mission combines all my interests. I have a deep passion for Space and growing a sovereign Australian industry through cross-sector collaboration. I am also passionate about STEM and creating opportunities for future generations.

What do you love most about working on the AROSE Lunar Rover project?

I pinch myself every day that I’m working on Australia’s first ever designed and built Lunar Rover. I’ve been passionate about Space for as long as I can remember. Now I’m the lead engineer working to send a rover to the moon and supporting Australia’s world leading Space research – it’s a dream come true.

The individuals that make up the AROSE team are just phenomenal. Not only are they very skilled at what they do, but they are genuinely great people. They’re just a pleasure to be around. It’s an honour to be on this mission.

How will this mission inspire students to pursue careers in STEM?

Space has been my passion for my entire life. Today’s young people have so many opportunities available to them now as Australia’s Space sector gains momentum. My aim is to help put Australia’s Space sector on the international stage and to inspire the next generation.

What is your favourite thing in space, and why?

I grew up in country South Australia, in Berri and then Murray Bridge. When I was five or six, I remember thinking Space was this big, amazing thing beyond our reach. Then I learned that we can actually send robots and people up there to work and live, and it blew my mind.

4th year undergraduate in Mechanical Engineering and Synthetic Chemistry at The University of Western Australia

What is your role on the Trailblazer Team?

At SpAARC I work on the mechanical and software development teams. I am responsible for the design of one of the context imaging systems on the rover, that will provide visuals on our interactions with the regolith. Part of the intern role is throwing myself into a variety of tasks in the AROSE Lunar Rover design team. I help with engineering the structural interfaces for the rover avionics and testing our models.

Being a part of the lunar rover design as part of the AROSE Consortium has been great for my on-the-job understanding of systems engineering. I’ve also been able to take part in the key phases of a space mission, right now being in Preliminary Design Review (PDR) phase.

What is your background Lorian, and how did it bring you to AROSE?

I was a Student Engineer at the Binar Space Program, where I designed the BinarX avionics board set that enables students to and payloads to be flown on Binar CubeSats. I led the BinarX High School Payload Development Program in a mentorship role, running Space outreach events. I also worked as a lab demonstrator at the University of Western Australia, teaching practical manufacturing skills to undergraduate students, in metal casting, sheet metal work, and machining. In my previous role I was able to connect with the AROSE Lunar Rover design team and when the opportunity came up to be a part of the project, I jumped at it.

What do you love most about working on the AROSE Lunar Rover project?

Engineering in space is hard. There is so much creativity in designing for an extreme environment like the lunar surface. I love that there’s never a boring moment, and that I will now always have a fun fact about the Moon to share. This is the first large-scale mission for the Australian Space Agency. We’re not only building a lunar rover, we are also creating a  platform that makes space part of the ongoing conversation in Australia.

This internship has helped me find out that I want to continue chasing opportunities to be a part of frontier space missions.

How will this mission inspire students to pursue careers in STEM?

It’s important that STEM is accessible and fun in schools. STEM gets a bad reputation for being boring because of the disconnect between theory and the world around us.  Being able to see your country represented on the Moon and see role models you can relate to is vital for students. I hope this mission is not just a one-time thing for Australia but the first of many.

Adapting Australian technology and the expertise we already have to a new environment can give us both exciting opportunities and better ways to collaborate internationally.

What is your favourite thing in space, and why?

I love how much we don’t know about space. Space is so big and remains mostly a mystery to us. The more we discover, the more it challenges our understanding of fundamental physics and chemistry.

Space Systems Director at Fugro SpAARC

What is your role on the Trailblazer Team?

I am the Trailblazer Mission Project Manager for the AROSE Consortium, located at Fugro’s SpAARC remote operations facility in Perth’s CBD. This complex is about doing mission operations, from deep sea to deep space, here in Australia and internationally. SpAARC will be the central command facility for the mission once the lunar rover lands on the Moon. This is also the place where the AROSE Consortium is co-located for the design work that we’re doing for the lunar rover mission.

In February 2024, SpAARC shadowed Intuitive Machines’ operations for IM-1, the first commercial lander on the Moon.

What is your background Dawn, and how did it bring you to AROSE?

I got interested in space at university. I took an undergraduate class in astronomy and really fell in love with it, and I ended up getting my undergrad in astrophysics. I spent two decades working for NASA, including as project manager for the BioSentinel project. I was also the deputy project manager on a NASA lunar orbiter mission known as LADEE. It measured the dust that lofts off the surface of the Moon as well as the exosphere, the non-interacting molecules that surround the Moon. It was an extremely exciting mission. I left NASA to join Fugro and I arrived in Australia as the nation’s flagship Trailblazer Mission was announced – designing and delivering Australia’s first ever lunar rover – and I asked if I could be part of that team. It was great timing.

I love lunar missions. I think we’ve got a lot to learn about the Moon. It’s so close but it’s such a unique environment, we have a long way to go. This is my second mission that’s lunar related and hopefully not my last.

Tell us about the team AROSE has assembled for this mission?

Because this is a lunar rover that will travel across the Moon’s surface, that’s a very specific type of activity, a very specific type of environment. So, within the AROSE Consortium we've built up a very specific skillset. Our team has applied a systems engineering mindset, and that means we're really looking at the rigorous structure of our requirements, driving that down to our concept of operations, and then building up a verification and test plan to support those requirements. We need to prove that we've built the thing that needs to be built to operate in this harsh environment.

We have a lot of systems engineers on the team. We also have a lot of roboticists. If you're building a spacecraft, maybe that's not the skill you need, but we have a lot of roboticists on the team. And then all of the engineering capabilities – the mechanical, the electrical, the software engineers, all of those have to come together. It's actually one of the most exciting things about building a spacecraft team or a space rover team, is that you have no choice but to bring together these diverse skills together into a team to accomplish the goal. That's what makes space missions so fun to do as a project.

How important is this mission to Australia?

This is a mission that’s going through the entire life cycle. So the design work that’s happening in Australia, build work that will happen in Australia, test, integration, and operation. Showing that Australia can be part of every aspect of a space mission life cycle is really critical – critical we show that domestically and on the international stage, Australia has all that to offer to the entire globe.

What do you love most about working on this project?

We are taking what Australia has been good at for a really long time – remote operations and semi-autonomous operations – and applying it to the needs in space. This is such a great opportunity to help impact the Australian space ecosystem and inspire, lead and create pathways for the next generation of our space workforce. What keeps me interested is doing that hard thing, doing the thing that hasn’t been done before, and finding a way through it. And doing that with a team of amazing, passionate, diverse types of people, bringing that all together, I’m hooked. I’ll do that for a career, that sounds great.

What is your favourite thing in space?

The Moon really does excite me. It’s not just exciting from a scientific perspective or a space perspective, but it’s exciting from a cultural perspective too. Every culture cares about the Moon, every culture has the Moon embedded in its stories. I think the Moon is worth the time and attention for sure.

Space Systems Engineer, Nova Systems

What is your role on the Trailblazer Team?

As part of the Trailblazer systems engineering team my role involves pulling together various documentation for milestone reviews, which are a key aspect of space missions. It’s been great interfacing with the rover design and operations teams whose information is being consolidated for these reviews. I’m certainly learning a lot!

What is your background Nadia, and how did it bring you to AROSE?

I double-majored in Mechatronic Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Adelaide. I have been working as a Systems Engineer at Nova Systems for more than 3 years, initially working on the integration, test and operations of a hyperspectral payload on the South Australian CubeSat, Kanyini. This grew my systems engineering experience as well as my knowledge about space technologies.

This experience led me to the exciting opportunity to work on the Trailblazer lunar rover for the AROSE Consortium. Nova’s involvement in the rover mission is focussed on systems engineering – the integration of the modules and subsystems that make up the rover system.

Tell us about the team AROSE has assembled for this mission?

The AROSE team is super diverse. We have people who have worked at NASA and ESA on larger space technologies, as well as Australian space research groups, large defence prime projects, and complete newbies to the industry. We have a good gender balance too.

I felt really welcomed coming from Nova Systems into the AROSE Consortium, with Fugro and other partners. It’s a privilege working with and learning from some very smart people.

How important is this mission to Australia?

The Trailblazer mission gives Australia the chance to show off its remote operations, robotics, systems engineering and innovation capabilities. If we can show Australia and the world what we can do on the Moon, it opens up the possibilities of exploring the rest of space in collaboration with other countries, especially since this is a collaboration with NASA.

What do you love most about working on this project?

I love that I am constantly learning new things about the many intricacies of the Moon, travelling through space and surviving hostile space environments. The team is so clever and I am learning a lot from them. A lot of creativity, technical knowledge and logistics has gone into this mission.

What is your favourite thing in space?

I love that there is still so much to discover about space, and that with every space mission we unlock another piece of the puzzle. I don’t think we’ll ever discover everything there is to know about space, which is a scary but also intriguing prospect.

Principal Engineer, Space Systems at Fugro

What is your role on the Trailblazer Team?

I lead the team responsible for the rover design, analysis, testing, and eventual build.

What is your background Mark, and how did it bring you to AROSE?

I formerly worked at NASA as the Robotics Lead for the Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA Ames Research Centre in California. In that role we worked with rovers, satellites, and free-flying robots on the International Space Station. When the opportunity to participate in Trailblazer presented itself, it was an easy decision.

I also work with AROSE Consortium members The University of Western Australia and the Queensland University of Technology. At UWA, I am currently Adjunct Senior Research Fellow with the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research. At QUT, I am an Adjunct Professor, Science and Engineering Faculty, School of Electrical Engineering & Robotics.

Tell us about the team AROSE has assembled for this mission?

We have a wonderful mix of people with varying backgrounds. My team includes mechanical, electrical, computer science, and physical science engineers. They come from leading institutions, from industry, and traditional space organisations such as NASA Ames and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.

How important is this mission to Australia?

Trailblazer is Australia’s flagship space mission and of critical importance to the future of the nation’s space industry.

What do you love most about working on this project?

The moon is easily in the top five most difficult places to visit for a rover – even more difficult than Mars. That makes this project uniquely challenging and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to advance our progress into the solar system.

What is your favourite thing in space?

I love that engineering things for space challenges your assumptions about the world. Our experience on Earth does not serve us well when thinking about creating objects to work in space's extreme temperatures, vacuum, and radiation. Rarely does a day go by that I am not reminded that I am thinking about a topic incorrectly, and I need to return to basic physics for the answer.