Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to Digitally Curious, a podcast to help you navigate the future of AI and beyond. Your host is world-renowned futurist and author of Digitally Curious, Andrew Grill. Every episode is filled with actionable advice about technology that will help enhance you and your business. That will help enhance you and your business. Andrew's guests will help you become more curious about the latest tech and what's just around the corner.

Speaker 2: 0:31

As many listeners may know, I started my career in the space industry designing satellite modems for the University of South Australia, then as an engineer at the Optus Satellite Earth Station at Belrose in Sydney, and was later involved with the design of an innovative satellite communications platform the Australian Army while at British Aerospace. Australia Space has always been something that's fascinated me, so I'm thrilled that we have Australia's first qualified astronaut, catherine Bennell-Pegg, on the show today. Catherine's journey is nothing short of extraordinary, from growing up under the starry skies of Sydney's northern beaches to earning her place amongst the elite ranks of the European Space Agency. Catherine's story is one of relentless determination and groundbreaking achievement. Her 13 months of rigorous astronaut training with the European Space Agency included mastering spacecraft systems, robotics and survival techniques, and culminated in her historic graduation as Australia's first official astronaut. Catherine now stands ready to inspire future generations and represent Australia on missions to the International Space Station and beyond.

Speaker 2: 1:36

This conversation was part of a longer interview for an Engineers Australia UK chapter event held in London, but it was just too good to keep to a room full of Australian engineers, so I'm delighted to be able to share Catherine's story on the Digitally Curious podcast. Catherine, let's kick off. What got you into space.

Speaker 3: 1:53

For me it was always sort of space or bus. I always loved, you know, looking up at the stars and wanted to go explore them, like most kids do. About seven out of 10 Aussie kids under the age of 12 want to be astronauts, which is phenomenal, and I think it just comes from, you know, that childhood curiosity and desire for adventure. Many of us have the same reason you look under a rock or climb a tree, the same reason people wanted to explore our world. Since, you know, humanity began and also explore space, and as I grew up, I really wanted to be an astronaut and so I set out to see what that would take and I saw that to be an astronaut, you could have a career in pretty much any STEM field. It didn't have to be a space career. It could be in science and engineering and math, pilot, be a doctor. You should be someone that like expeditions, whether that's scientific expeditions or other kinds of adventures, and you should have operational skills, live internationally and all these things, and that all sounded pretty great.

Speaker 3: 2:55

And I ended up studying physics and engineering at uni in Sydney because the engineering degree had the word space in the title space engineering and I didn't even really know what engineering was, beyond the definition of the term, but I knew that it would build on my experience flying and the physics that I love so much, and while it was a slog at the beginning, I loved it by the end when you got to stop answering questions in the back of a textbook and actually got to be creative. But I realized at that point that I couldn't have the kind of career I wanted in Australia, which was to develop big, beautiful space missions not at that time and so I went overseas and studied a bit more, including at Cranfield University in the UK, and then cracked into the space sector. After some internships at space agencies, finally got my first job at Airbus Defence and Space in Stevenage, which was a wonderful adventure of living in the UK, where my mother's family's from, and having an international lifestyle like many of us have.

Speaker 2: 3:53

International experience is something I've always found important for my career, and I'm interested in your own experience of living and working outside Australia. How did this help you become an astronaut?

Speaker 3: 4:04

I got to live and work as a space engineer in six countries, some of them multiple times, germany. I've lived there three or four times, depending on how you count it, for example, and I found that working in an international environment from a project basis as well as from a life basis really made me say that there's lots of different kinds of engineers, lots of ways to culturally come to solutions and, in fact, in the astronaut selection, something that the degree of which its importance to me was unexpected, was how much international experience in the selection and in your ability to get through the training, like things like you know looking through words of what people say to their intent, and being generous in you know looking through words of what people say to their intent and being generous in you know interpreting what people say with an optimism, bias, understanding. You know the way people give feedback is different, the way people act is different and that doesn't mean you stereotype different cultures, but it makes you see that there's a spectrum of ways to get things done and you can take the best and worst of different things. I know I've had to effectively mediate between you know people that may be Dutch and Japanese in a project where one's extremely direct and the other's extremely indirect, but you all have the same united purpose and passion and, with the right experiences, internationally and interculturally, you can get through that. And in space, as you all know, frank, you know a team of astronauts from a team of nations, each with a huge ecosystem on the ground, all working together as well. So that's a huge part of it, um, but yeah, for me, um, like there's, I think that there are a few things that were really wonderful about a space career. You know, um, for me, I got to, you know, launch payloads on high altitude balloons and witness rockets be launched from above the polar circle.

Speaker 3: 5:54

In Sweden, when I worked in the UK, I got to work on, um, you know, lisa, pathfinder, a gravity wave mission, an Earth observation mission, and later in Germany on human spaceflight vehicles and platforms and robotic missions. And you know I was having such an amazing time doing that. I learned so much from the people around me, and it was when the Australian Space Agency set up that I was attracted home. I was attracted home, and you know, to do something greater than I ever thought I'd be able to do as a space engineer, which is to help, not just develop a piece of technology or a mission, which was thrilling to do, but actually to help grow a whole space sector. And now, as an astronaut, I see being an astronaut is bigger than the space sector. It's for many kinds of researchers, as well as raising the aspirations of the public as well. So yeah, it's been a really interesting journey, I would say.

Speaker 2: 6:44

I'm a futurist, so I have to ask you what excites you about the future?

Speaker 3: 6:50

Oh, I mean, it's such an exciting time to be an astronaut, especially a rookie astronaut, like graduating from astronaut training is really just the beginning of whatever may lie ahead. As you say, you know the International Space Station, this big, beautiful facility that is almost the size of a soccer field, 109 meters across, you know, with the internal volume of like the passenger part of an A380, just filled with science facilities, that's going to retire so that, you know, people can go forward to the moon and also explore low-Earth orbit in a more commercial way. So there's going to be in a not very optimistic scenario, but you know lots of different destinations for astronauts, lots of kind of work to do, yeah, whether contributing to those from the ground or, you know, in space as an astronaut. It's incredible. You know we're going back to the moon not to repeat what we did before, but you know to go to a different part of the moon, the South Polar region, where we can stay longer because it's light. For longer you don't have the two weeks daylight and two weeks darkness and in the valleys where it's always dark, it's the coldest part of the solar system and that pushes everything we have, pushes our engineering. It'll push our understanding of the universe and how the earth formed and also help to do things like refine of the universe and how the earth formed and also, you know, help to do things like refine geothermal input into climate models.

Speaker 3: 8:04

So, yeah, for me, just looking to contribute to that endeavor and to the kind of science you can do in space, like medical research the amount of science you can do up there, especially in medical research, blew me away on the training In my immediate future. You know I'm focusing right now on getting out across Australia and opening doors for researchers to have more access and awareness of human spaceflight, as well as different businesses that could enter into supply chain gaps and offer engineering solutions, for example. And this year in the last couple of months I've been speaking to a lot of kids in particularly in remote and regional areas to, you know, try and uplift their aspirations, whatever they may be, whether it's space or STEM or something else altogether, just to teach them to themselves, I hope. But yeah, it's pretty exciting and you know, being an astronaut, just like being a flight director, there's always an element of international living, even if you're not zooming around the earth every 90 minutes Training is, you know, in the US, it's in Japan, it can be in Russia, it's in Europe and Canada.

Speaker 3: 9:05

So, yeah, I expect a lot more of that in my future. And one of the learnings I guess I took forward from living abroad when I was in the UK and across Europe for was you know how important having hobbies is when you live abroad, like sports, particularly for me, were a way that was easy to make friends as opposed to not having that vector. And in space as well, astronauts do a lot of sport to relax and have team bonding.

Speaker 2: 9:32

What should someone listening to this podcast who's also dreamed about being an astronaut be thinking about?

Speaker 3: 9:38

If you are interested in space as a career whatever your career is, whether you're an engineer or otherwise that it's a really exciting time to work in space and we need all kinds of thinkers and all kinds of doers to help prepare for the future of space activities. You know space critically underpins our lives today in a way that many people don't know about. Across Australia about a year ago a whole load of farmers couldn't work for more than a day because there was a failure in one single satellite system that affected all the GPS-enabled tractors that use that system. And it wasn't a failure that anyone expected be a vulnerability in the industry. People just didn't understand space enough to see how critically we rely on it. You know space ultimately is just a place. You know it's an eye in the sky from where we can see phenomenon around the world. So it's been used to track refugees, so we can do food drops better, to identify modern slavery, to identify fires and to help manage remote industries. And from what you can see from that eye in the sky you can connect. And what you can connect you can inform. So, like every time you tap your phone to pay for something, you're using space technology. And beyond that.

Speaker 3: 10:53

You know, human spaceflight, which is often thought of as perhaps the most niche, or dare say even luxurious part of space, actually is really critical for scientific research as well as economic opportunity, in ways that I didn't realize at the time I started my astronaut training.

Speaker 3: 11:10

I knew it in the shallow but not in the depth, because in space, when you have the gravity vector removed, you're not under 1g of gravity anymore and you're exposed to radiation. In an isolated, confined, remote environment, phenomena change right, so crystals grow larger and more pure, things mix differently. You don't have heat flow based convection, only forced convection, and that means we can do amazing research into medicines, into mixing of new things like concrete, into antimicrobial devices, and the list goes on and on, and so being able to do that unique science in space is unlocking a lot on earth too. So, yeah, for those that are purpose-driven, space is absolutely an opportunity to work in, and for those of you that are working internationally in other areas, know that working internationally is good for you as a whole person as well as your career. Despite the challenges, I think I would never change that.

Speaker 2: 12:07

So what does it take to be an astronaut? What should you be studying now? Do you have to be a scientist or an engineer?

Speaker 3: 12:15

Yeah, I remember when I was at Airbus in Stevenage in the thermal team we hired someone from a biscuit factory. He brought such good ideas like a thermal engineer making biscuits right. And I've heard of people from a story of someone from SeaWorld being hired into SpaceX right, because they knew how to use valves in a really creative way and build those kinds of systems.

Speaker 2: 12:37

What rules do you follow to help grow your career?

Speaker 3: 12:40

I'm always a fan of pushing yourself outside your comfort zone, of taking on tasks that seem a bit out of reach, because I think we're all capable of more than we imagine ourselves to be and I've always believed that everything is a product of talent, time and effort. Right and effort is the most important. The other two things just make it faster or more efficient. So if you're really purpose-driven and love something and you're willing to work at it, you can get there. And for me, when I first got to work on the analysis of part of a space mission, and then a component, and then a subsystem, and then a mission, and then an industry, and now be an astronaut each one of those things I was like I've made it. And I was like oh's more to do. And you know, you just keep going and going and I remember early in my career being quite intimidated when I felt like I was very far from being the smartest in the room, if I was the least experienced in the room and the most unsure. And the more experienced I've got as an engineer, the more willing I am to ask the potentially silly question, because I have no shame in it, because my goal is now to understand. If you hide the question you don't progress. And you know, on astronaut training, in the classroom there were usually six of us as students. You needed to understand, so you just ask the silly question, right, Even if there's cameras in there. You need to get the knowledge and so to do that you need to really quickly build that psychological safety in your team to progress that. But yeah, for me, I mean I think that Obviously I've had a few stage changes, the biggest one being from space engineer to astronaut. But I'm lucky that the space part of my career continues when you're between big training blocks. You've pretty much used your experience from your original day job as an astronaut to keep moving forward.

Speaker 3: 14:31

And on the astronaut training we learned so much. We learned a lot about science because we're scientists in the sky, the hands, the eyes, the ears of scientists on the ground. We're medical guinea pigs, so we learned how to do medical tests on each other and others. We did all the expeditions like winter survival, ocean survival. We went in parabolic flight, vomit comets and zero-g planes. We did scuba diving to learn how to do the first learnings about spacewalks in simulators to fly the robotic arm. We even had to learn a foreign language, space history and policy. It was really wonderful because I love learning and I love ideas and this was just a great way to do that. It's part of a great team atmosphere and to do that for the first time representing Australia, makes me so excited. Now I've come home to use that knowledge to try and unlock the ability for more Australians to be involved in human spaceflight Maybe one day even more Australian astronauts, because imagine what that would do for our country.

Speaker 2: 15:30

What challenges did you face on your path to becoming Australia's first astronaut?

Speaker 3: 15:35

I only had a few weeks notice that I was actually going to be an astronaut before I started training there. So my head was absolutely spinning. And, you know, I arrived at the European Astronaut Centre, which is near Cologne, on the first day and they had all of our class time to arrive together. And when we entered the big entrance hall, we had, you know, up on the first day and they had all of our class time to arrive together. And when we entered the big entrance hall, we had, you know, up on the screen next to this huge ISS International Space Station model. It said welcome home. And it kind of felt like that because I'd been away from Europe, you know, four years and I was coming back to not the same place that was my home, but to part of my former life in the European space industry. And waiting for us as we walked through the doors in that entrance hall was so many of the ESA, the European Space Agency existing astronauts and retired astronauts and it was really kind of overwhelming because they are, you know, astronauts that I had looked up to for my whole career. You know, I'd read a lot of their biographies, um, and they were welcoming us as peers and it was like, okay, our life is changing now, like you could see that that shift starting to occur, but quickly enough. You know you're so busy, yeah, you barely have time to step back and take a breath and and reflect. Um, so you know just the logistics of moving country. We're tough with two kids and a husband. But hats off to my husband. He took on the hard stuff there, but for me I think it was hard to pace myself.

Speaker 3: 17:04

We had over 300 instructors in the 13 months we were trained and every one of them was an expert in their field and would hunt down the answer to any question you had and they'd put in, you know, hundreds of hours for each of their lessons. So they were spectacular and you just have to sometimes just stop and keep energy for the next class and not go down every rabbit hole, not do everything to perfection, because eventually you won't be able to keep that up, because eventually you won't be able to keep that up. And it's really good practice for being in space, which missions are usually six months now, meaning that it's a marathon, not a sprint. So having those self-care principles, which is one of the principles we learn about in the human behavior and performance module we have, which I think is similar to the op team. Where you look at. You know there's an international space station human behavior and performance model. You can Google one of the old versions.

Speaker 3: 17:56

It's good reading and that takes you through things like self-care, which for me is something that at times in my career I have not respected. You know, I'm sure a lot of us have burnt the candle at both ends a lot, but you know it's important that you know rest. You rest enough to work well, not work hard enough to deserve a rest, because in space, if you mess up at the wrong time, because you're tired at a time when it's non-optimal to be tired and you might not know when that is, then there are big consequences. So yeah, that was something that I had to learn and on top of that, learning Russian. That was hard. I'm not a language person and I had to put in a lot of extra effort from day one on that and I was so happy when I got through it and I was like, great, I might actually pass this thing. Now I've got through that module.

Speaker 2: 18:40

Your astronaut training seems to be pretty rigorous, so was there anything that surprised you in the training that you hadn't anticipated?

Speaker 3: 18:47

Not really, because I had studied so much in the selection what I was going to be expecting. I'd like speed read every biography I could find to understand what I'd be in for. But what did surprise me in a really positive way was how, in the European Space Agency astronaut training, we were not competitive at all, not even in personality. So we were, you know, informed really early in the training. Your flight are not competing against each other. The decisions are made are multifactorial. If you get through the training, you've all got every chance to progress well. So back each other through the training. You'll each have different strengths and weaknesses.

Speaker 3: 19:31

We all came from totally different backgrounds. The two of us were engineers, one more aero, with a bit of space myself space. There was an astrophysicist, a neuroscientist, a helicopter test pilot and a doctor, and we all had multiple kind of second-level careers as well. And how can you compare yourself in medical training to someone that's a doctor? You can't compare. So you just help each other out and get along with it. And so that camaraderie we had was fantastic, and that's not something that I had expected. I thought it would be fun but competitive, and so, yeah, that was one of the best parts of it was going through it together and now cheering each other on. Two of my class have already been assigned missions, which is awesome, and we're all so excited for them. Them, and I look forward to seeing the others go up too.

Speaker 2: 20:15

What key things would you like our audience to take away from this episode?

Speaker 3: 20:18

Dream big for yourself, whatever your dreams may be like for yourself, your community, your world. And as you do that, you know, do it because you love the journey, not just the destination, and write your own story on your way there. There's lots of many, there's many, many ways to get to a goal that you know. You have dreams that become goals, that become actions, and so just pursue that without hesitation if you think it's something worth doing. I'd also say keep going to networking events like this one. Building an understanding of what's happening within a broader network, as well as people in your workplace, is a way to see opportunities and solutions to problems that you might not have realised existed. Yeah, they'd be my two main points.

Speaker 2: 21:07

Thank you so much for speaking with us today, catherine. You can learn more about her work at the Australian Space Agency at spacegovau. Thank you to Catherine. Engineers Australia and Frankious is available at digitallycuriousai.

Speaker 1: 21:36

Until next time, we invite you to stay digitally curious.