3 July 2018
A team from South Australia has edged out competitors from 32 countries to take the grand prize of the global ActInSpace competition at the Toulouse Space Show.
The team of four, Wright Team Incorporated, won through to the international finals after winning the first ever Australian ActInSpace title hosted by the University of South Australia’s Innovation & Collaboration Centre in Adelaide on 25-26 May.
The South Australian Space Industry Centre Chief Executive Richard Price congratulated the team and said the win was further evidence of South Australia’s vibrant space ecosystem.
“Our whole ecosystem has been involved in this achievement. Students from the University of Adelaide are in the team while UniSA planned and executed the Australian event and brought together industry leaders to support the participating teams,” Mr Price said.
“There is so much happening in the space industry in Australia at the moment and it’s great to see this incredibly talented team from South Australia representing the nation.
“This huge win will no doubt open doors for the team and it goes to show that there are opportunities in this exciting industry that can start right here in South Australia.
“We are continuing to build on our industrial strengths, our strengths in academia and our strengths in research and development to demonstrate why South Australia is the undisputed champion of this industry.”
Manager of UniSA’s Innovation & Collaboration Centre, Jasmine Vreugdenburg says the fact that a team of young South Australians has taken out the top prize in the global ActInSpace competition is a huge vote of confidence for the State.
“I am so delighted for this team of young innovators; their success is just another example of the incredible potential there is in South Australia to play a leading role in space industry innovation,” Vreugdenburg says.
“I encourage people to apply for the Space Incubator Program (Venture Catalyst Space) so we can continue to grow the space economy in South Australia and support new ideas into potentially global businesses.
“We need to ensure we keep providing the best business and development support for new generations of creators, innovators and entrepreneurs in the space and other industries, so that we can make the most of the incredible talent we have in South Australia.”
Wright Team Incorporated consists of Kosta Canatselis, 21, Michael De Angelis, 26, Levin Lian, 24, and Bez Mohammadi, 21. Canatselis and Mohammadi are current students at the Entrepreneurship, Commercialisation and Innovation Centre at the University of Adelaide, while Lian and De Angelis are graduates who are currently working at SAAB and BAE Systems respectively.
The team worked on a challenge set by French Space Agency, Centre National D’etudes Spatiales (CNES), to create new innovative traceability services. With the Civil Aviation Safety Authority forecasting seven million drones to be in the air by 2020, the team saw an opportunity. They came up with ‘Seraph’, a unique tamper proof system for drone registration with real-time tracking so at any one time, we know who are flying the drones, where they are going and where they have come from.
The May event in Adelaide was sponsored by the South Australian Government and hosted by the University of South Australia’s Innovation & Collaboration Centre, attracting almost 100 local registrants. Across the globe, over 2,200 people took part, with 550 teams across 35 countries and 70 cities.
