Aerospace Concepts at the 65th International Astronautical Congress

The 65th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) was held in Toronto from 23 Sept to 3 Oct 2014. The IAC is the largest international space industry and community event in the world, regularly attracting thousands of professionals in the space field.

Aerospace Concepts was represented at the congress by Michael Brett and Michael Kretzenbacher. This year’s congress proved particularly successful for Aerospace Concepts, with the company presenting two papers, assisting in the winning bid for Adelaide to host the 2017 IAC and having a team member recognised by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) as one of five 2014 Young Space Leaders.

The paper Skills Audit of the Australian Space Sector was written by Michael Brett, Julia Leeson and Shaun Wilson, and presented by Michael Brett as a first time participant in the session Space Education And Outreach Symposium – Enabling the Future – Developing the Space Workforce.

The second paper, Considerations for the Safe Controlled Targeted De-Orbit Of Large Space Vehicles, written by Michael Brett, Dr Mark Bateup, Chris Butt & Shaun Wilson, explored how Aerospace Concepts would use the Range Safety Template Toolkit (RSTT) to analyse the deorbit and atmospheric re-entry of the International Space Station. This paper was presented in the Symposium On Commercial Spaceflight Safety Issues – Commercial Space Flight Safety and Emerging Issues. This is the fourth time Aerospace Concepts has presented in this session. This session was chaired by FAA Analyst John Sloan and is regularly attended by the US Office of Commercial Space Transportation (FAA AST) Associate Administrator George Neald and his team. The paper was well received, and was nominated by the Chairs as the best paper of the session and therefore eligible for publication in the peer-reviewed and highly esteemed journal Acta Astronautica.