Adelaide’s space boss: ‘Having my babies didn’t slow me down, it only made me more determined to succeed’
Industry leader, space company chief, entrepreneur, innovator, pioneer, mum. Flavia Tata Nardini has it all … and she’s only getting started.
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Love brought Flavia Tata Nardini to Adelaide.
She was working at the European Space Agency, just outside Amsterdam, and met a man from this neck of the woods who was working as an attachment with Australian Defence.
A romance quickly blossomed and the young scientist contemplated continuing her career in a place which she had barely heard of.
“We fell in love, as you do when you’re in your late 20s and, when I became pregnant with our first daughter, we made our decision to go back to Adelaide to raise our family,” she says.
Now, as we speak, Tata Nardini is the head of one of Australia’s most acclaimed space companies, Fleet Space Technologies, and is expecting her third child. By any measure it’s been a remarkable journey.
A stranger in a strange land, rising to the very top of a rapidly evolving industry, while raising two young children … and now expecting a third.
It’s not that she set out to be a role model for scores of young women dreaming of space and motherhood at the same time, it’s just that it never really occurred to her to do anything else.
“Having my babies didn’t slow me down, it only made me more determined to succeed,” Tata Nardini says.
“They became my source of inspiration and motivation to create a better future for them and for myself.”
Now she dreams of one day travelling into outer space.
As a little girl growing up in Rome, Flavia Tata Nardini would relish trips to the nearby mountains to watch shooting stars turn on a light show against the night sky and dream of what might be.
Her mother was a teacher, her father was an architect and none of her siblings had any interest whatsoever in what was flickering above in the night-time.
“I was one of five children, but I was the only one born with the space bug,” she recalls. “While my brothers and sisters had other interests, for me the stars were everything.
“I was obsessed with the idea of extraterrestrials and by the time I was eight, I was fairly sure I’d discover aliens. It was a passion of mine.
“We would stay in a beautiful house in the mountains outside Roma, and for a week or two in the middle of the year you could see hundreds of shooting stars lighting up a very black sky. These were the famous Shooting Stars of San Lorenzo. I remember thinking it was the most incredible thing I have ever seen, and it inspired me.
“At that age, I thought surely we can do something to get there, and it’s a dream that’s never left me.”
From watching stars as a young girl gazing to the heavens in her pyjamas in the Italian summer, the drive towards space took on a more practical course as Tata Nardini graduated high school.
She flourished academically and in sport but never lost sight of her childhood ambitions, which took her to University La Sapienza in Rome to complete a Bachelor of Aerospace Engineering before undertaking her Masters Degree in Space Engineering.
Her studies reinforced her determination to investigate the possibilities of space exploration.
“I enjoy studying but my early studies were demanding because I don’t remember touching space in any of my subjects for the first three years,” she recalls.
“It was all maths and physics and chemistry. By the time I got to my Masters though, I got the reward. It was all about space engineering.
“At the end of my Masters, I moved to The Netherlands where I had the opportunity to work at the European Space Agency (ESA).
“I had to learn to speak Dutch while also learning my job. I already spoke French and Spanish as well as Italian but learning Dutch was quite a challenge.
“But I was young, and I was dealing with hi-tech matters such as rocket parts, the development of engines for space and space missions. It was just fun.”
She spent seven years working at the ESA before the shift to SA, where she immediately sensed opportunity.
“I knew Australia was a big defence and engineering hub but when we got here, I found there was not a lot of commercial space activity and realised there was an opportunity to do something about that,” she says.
The thing was, the opportunity did not present as quickly as anticipated and she hit hurdle after hurdle finding a job that matched her space engineering qualifications and interest. By the time they welcomed their second child, Tata Nardini found herself to be a very highly qualified mum who had plenty to offer … but nowhere to work.
“It is much harder than rocket science and I loved being there for my girls, but I started looking around for work and couldn’t find anything,” she recalls.
“I thought about working in the universities and in the mining industry, I thought about doing a PhD, but I realised my real love was space and I had to work in that industry.”
After two years of living in Adelaide, Tata Nardini met Matthew Pearson, an astute self-taught businessman with no space background, who would become her business partner.
It didn’t take long before she realised the best option for someone of her qualifications who couldn’t find the right company was to start her own enterprise and Pearson’s business expertise gave her the perfect entry.
They had nothing in common. She knew very little about business, he knew less about space technology.
But they had the perfect combination of skills to create something worthwhile and, before long, founded the start-up company LaunchBox, which allowed them to launch 3D printed nanosatellites into the stratosphere with school kids.
It was the ideal introduction to business together and allowed them to aim higher and eventually start Fleet Space Technologies.
Things have changed significantly in the six years since, with Tata Nardini now working with the board and on financial matters while Pearson leads the Research and Development department.
“He’s a very smart man and is a self-taught engineer, while I’ve somehow become a business person,” she says. “Somehow that combination worked for us from the very beginning.”
Indeed, it did.
The new partners secured a $25,000 South Australian government grant to match their own money, giving them just $50,000 to start the company. Within months, they had met with the Blackbird investment group and had $5m to really get the enterprise moving.
Fleet Space Technologies launched Australia’s first four nanosatellites within a three-week period in 2018, followed by two more satellites in 2021 and increased that number to seven last year.
The company has grown from 20 people in its first year to 100 spread between Australia, Canada, Chile and the United States.
“We’re trying to simplify the industry so that space technology is not rocket science,” she jokes.
“Satellite networks should be made easier for everyone to use, not harder. We grew so fast from two people in a garage to 100 people.
“You might think it’s hard to believe the growth we’ve achieved but I always knew we had the potential to grow and keep growing in this endeavour.
“For me, Fleet Space Technologies is a hundred year company. In a few years, I want us to bring this company to $100m revenue so we can participate in activities on the moon.
“This is not a dream to me, it’s what we’re going to do.”
The growth, so far at least, may have a lot to do with Tata Nardini’s simple, commonsense approach to very advanced objectives – that satellites had to be affordable, capable and connect with various applications. In a very few years, she’s ticked all those boxes.
“We have always looked at innovative ways of improving the space industry,” she says.
“While they were sending up billion dollar satellites the size of a bus, we were 3D printing satellites the size of a letter box. We were doing all sorts of good stuff. If you do the math, it just makes sense when you can launch a satellite for a million dollars instead of a billion dollars.”
In the past year alone, Fleet Space Technologies launched seven such satellites that have been used in the search for critical minerals such as nickel, lithium and copper needed for the construction of electric vehicles and other sustainable objectives.
It now has more than 30 clients, including Rio Tinto and Barrick Gold Corporation, which are using its Exosphere technology to help find mineral deposits. This system uses ground-based sensors which pick up on ambient noise in the atmosphere, with that data then relayed to nanosatellites in orbit.
Other major clients range from exploration companies servicing the likes of Tesla to the Australian Government.
While Fleet Space Technologies has thrived at its southern suburbs base in Beverley, it is expanding further with plans under way to build the Australian Space Park on 10,000sq m adjacent to Adelaide Airport.
“When that’s established, we will be expanding even further,” Tata Nardini says.
“With the support of the South Australian Government, we and another two companies will be building satellites, rockets, space exploration devices and even flying cars.
“I believe there is a lot we have to do to help this planet and I’m proud to be part of a start-up that has grown to the point that we’re in a position to make change.
“When you look at the Earth from the view of a satellite, you can see that the problems are visible on a large scale.
“Our satellites discover important mineral deposits without drilling, which has been a huge environmental problem. If we want to move to an electric vehicle society, we need to have lithium, there’s no way around that.”
Tata Nardini believes the space industry can assist right here on Earth by creating better and stronger connectivity. As a passionate environmentalist, she is certain it’s one of the real benefits of the satellite system in which her company is so strongly involved.
“We have too much wastage, largely because people and industries are not connected,” she says.
“We lose 60 per cent of food in the supply chain and we waste so much water. A lot of this is because communities and industries are isolated and agriculture is not able to work efficiently. We need to connect better. Connectivity is a solution to a bigger problem and the benefits are huge.”
When Tata Nardini and her colleagues aren’t reaching for the stars, they’re also committed to introducing space technology to a new generation.
To that end, Fleet Space Technologies started a STEM program this year to bring space and space technology to South Australian primary and secondary school students. The result, Tata Nardini says with unbridled enthusiasm, was exciting beyond expectations.
“The reaction of the children of all ages has been incredible,” she says. “They want to look into space, to explore it, they want to walk on the moon. How cool is that?
“I love that the kids, the young people are so excited to learn and achieve more in this field than they ever imagined before.
“I get just as excited as the kids, though. My generation grew up on stories of moon landings and now it’s coming back, with NASA aiming to get back to the moon within 10 years. So, we have a new generation that can be part of this again.”
The desire to introduce younger people to space science drove Tata Nardini in 2014 to be one of the co-founders and chief executive of LaunchBox, a program designed to give students a hands-on space experience that would change the way they looked at the field.
The response was outstanding, with thousands of emails from students wanting to learn more and even how to get into the industry.
As the head of Fleet Space Technologies, Tata Nardini also plays a major role in Seven Sisters, the Australian Lunar Exploration Mission supporting NASA’s Artemis Program to send satellites to the moon in search of accessible resources.
She describes it as critical work and a vital step forward for the Australian space industry.
“Humans are fantastic explorers but terrible exploiters,” she says.
“Everywhere we go, we tend to destroy the habitat so when we go to the moon and to Mars, we need to make sure these bodies don’t get damaged.
“I know Australia will make an enormous contribution to the space industry in the future through our human resources alone. NASA is looking constantly at Australia for ways it can help.
“It’s such an exciting time for the industry here. With Katherine Bennell-Pegg selected as the first Australian woman to be trained as an astronaut by an international space agency (ESA), it further emphasises this country’s standing in the industry.”
Returning to the theme of juggling work and family life, Tata Nardini says she’s been doing it for a number of years now and has found the right balance.
“The first couple of years with children took a lot of work but I’m no different to a lot of parents who juggle that workload,” she says.
“I just had to do it and I loved it.
“Whether I’m at the office at Beverley or working in my house across the road from the sea, I’m not complaining. It’s the beauty of Adelaide.”
Still, it requires effort, discipline and dedication.
Just as she is committed to everything she’s put her hand to in the space industry, she also has a strict commitment to her health and fitness regimen.
That includes 10 hours sleep per night, no exceptions. That regimen allows her to work tirelessly late into her pregnancy.
“I take care of my health as a major priority,” she insists.
“Keeping calm is an important thing for me, it helps me make the right decisions. Eating the right food is important and so is getting enough sleep.
“When we get stressed in our work, it’s a sign we’re doing things wrong.
“Time to go for a walk along the beach. I do this on my own when I need some quiet time, but I love to do it as a family as well.
“The girls absolutely love space.
“For them, space is just a normal part of life and it’s female driven. We were buying a present recently for one of the girls’ friends, a boy, and I suggested space station Lego. She said, ‘No, Mum, you don’t buy that for him because space is for girls.’
“It’s wonderful that they see the space industry as something they could do. One of my daughters wants to be a space engineer and to be an actress.
“She wants to go to the moon and to win an Oscar and who says she can’t do both?”
Now, when she’s not running Fleet Space Technologies as a full-time job, Tata Nardini is also chair of the Australian Space Agency Space Industries Leaders Forum, ambassador of AmCham Council of Governors and adjunct professor of UniSA.
She was also chosen as just one of 28 people worldwide as a 2022 Bloomberg Catalyst, a group of visionaries selected for their contribution in helping make the world more prosperous and inclusive.
“Some people are just born to be explorers at heart, they just want to see what’s out there, and I can’t help myself, I’m one of them,” she says modestly.
The prospect of another child hasn’t dampened Tata Nardini’s enthusiasm for space travel.
She is adamant that the ambition is still a real possibility and is excited about what the next few years holds for the space industry and exploration.
If the opportunity arises, she says with a determined smile, she’ll be on board.
– additional reporting, Camero England ■
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