Flavia Tata Nardini

When Flavia Tata Nardini came to South Australia five years ago to be with her now husband, there was no space agency in Australia and few space-based startups. “It was not an optimal environment for my work,” says the Italian rocket scientist in a considerable understatement. Now, she says, Australia has more space startups per capita than any other country – at least 89. The Australian Space Agency launched in July and Nardini is leading the charge.

Her company, Fleet Space Technologies, develops shoebox-sized nanosatellites, which are cheaper than standard satellites and have the capacity to transform industries such as agriculture, mining and logistics. In the next few years, when an estimated 75 billion devices become connected to the web in the Internet of Things (IoT), Nardini’s nanosatellites will be able to check a property’s perimeters, its irrigation needs, even the location of a stray cow and communicate it to a farmer’s phone. (One client, who measures his 200,000 trees with a caliper, pen and notebook, will be able to track his forest’s regeneration from space.)

The journey hasn’t been easy. “When you run a space startup, you’re dependent on other people,” explains Nardini. There can be years of delays so Fleet created another product, Portal, that leverages existing satellites to ensure a revenue stream and keep employees, customers and investors engaged. And Nardini ignored any advice to reign in her celestial vision. “We have a tendency to scale down sometimes and to forget our dreams. But this is my time to make something big.”