Fundamentally, its important to identify what your regulatory obligations are from the outset of a project or risk delays, advised Ellis.

For example, its important to submit your application for regulatory approval early and to estimate the costs of managing the approval process in addition to the costs of the applications. she explained.

Sometimes the lead time to getting an approval is so long that by the time they come to that question at the end of developing whatever theyre developing, their projects going to be delayed because theyll have to wait for the appropriate authorisations.

When youre putting your proposal together its really important to address what are your obligations, if any, identify them, and then once youve identified them, then work out whos going to manage it. How are we going to manage it? And of course, theres costs associated with that as well.

Ellis said Project Possum (Polar Suborbital Science in the Upper Mesosphere) was an exciting opportunity to pursue suborbital microgravity research. This microgravity environment is induced by parabolic flight.

While Project Possum provides suborbital flight training on aircraft which complete a number of parabolas, the Astronaut-Candidates are being trained for suborbital flight on the next generation of commercial suborbital spaceflight vehicles.

This is more affordable than going all the way to the International Space Station (ISS) to perform experiments or test and qualify space hardware.

When training is complete, Ellis will be a qualified Suborbital Flight crew member, trained and accredited for spaceflight to a level which exceeds the minimum United States Code of Federal Regulations 460.5(b). This means accreditation to conduct experimental programs in High-G and suborbital environments for equipment testing and qualification, and also to undertake de-risking research earmarked for the ISS, the Lunar Gateway or beyond.

Elliss background is as a chemist and as a senior technical officer at BHP in the uranium technology team, before being made redundant when the miner closed the Newcastle site.

Asked by a career consultant what she would do next if she could do anything, Ellis answered rocket scientist, and was advised that law might be a good general option to start the next phase of her professional life.

She is of course eager to complete her training and get back to scientific research. The rescheduled five-day program is now slated for this December.

They decided to reschedule the flight and space suit training until September, but we just had a monthly meeting and they updated us to say that the flight and space suit trainings being rescheduled for December 7th to the 11th, in Melbourne, Florida, Ellis said.

I just cant wait to get out there.

Interested in a career in Australias dynamic space science industry? To learn more about Swinburnes Space Technology courses, click here.

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