DR Christopher Capon always wanted a career in space but when colourblindness stopped him from being an astronaut he found another way.

His space-engineering business, Nominal Systems, which he founded with Dr Brenton Smith in 2019, is helping to change the way satellites are designed, built and operated.

“What we do is effectively provide software to help companies design satellites better,” Dr Capon, 31, said.

“We kind of make satellite design like LEGO, and then our software lets companies understand the wear and tear of the satellites so that they continue to work longer in space.”

The Canberra start-up, which launched before covid, now has 11 employees and is achieving great success recently winning the 2022 ACT Exporter of the Year award.

“That award goes largely to the success we’ve had in the UK and some other projects that we are putting together with some US companies right now,” said Dr Capon.

Dr Capon said the software has been designed with the view to reduce the incidence of satellite failures.

“Over the last decade around 20 per cent of missions have been what’s called dead-on-arrival, so they haven’t been heard from,” he said.

“And roughly 40 per cent of satellites experience partial systems failure, so something doesn’t work within the first four months to a year.

“Our goal was to solve this problem. To make space-mission design simple, and operations scalable, by providing a safe to fail digital world for anyone to turn their space mission concepts into reality.”

When most people think of space they think of the glamour side being rockets, space stations, and astronauts.

In reality, Dr Capon said, most of the hard work is done designing and implementing systems that allow the rockets and satellites to be successfully launched into space.

“In the space industry, unfortunately everyone wants to be the hero, they want to build the rocket or the satellite and there aren’t enough companies that focus on the support ecosystems,” he said.

“What Brenton and I have focused on with Nominal Systems was how we can provide those modern tools to make space systems work better.”

Dr Capon said space technology has come such a long way that the size of the satellites are much smaller than they once were.

“Instead of building a billion-dollar satellite the size of a bus, these days lots of companies are looking to build hundreds of thousands of satellites that are more the size of a loaf of bread up to the size of a washing machine,” he said.

“So, the stuff that we do is critical because if you are managing a fleet of cars, for example, you need to know when to replace them, and what’s breaking, and so our software provides a unique way to do that, which is why we have been pretty successful to date.”

One of the greatest challenges facing everybody working in the space industry is the accumulated amount of space junk out there, and how we avoid colliding with it, Dr Capon said.

“It’s getting more crowded than it was, and space debris represents ongoing problems for active satellites that are in orbit,” he said.

“Even a one-centimetre size piece of debris can represent a significant risk to another spacecraft because things are moving very fast and you don’t want to get hit by anything.

“Debris is a constant concern and making sure that you are able to operate responsibility and sustainability in space has been a big key interest for everyone going forward.”

As well as building on its networks here at home, the business has forged a strong partnership with the UK Ministry of Defence.

“Our main customer is the UK Ministry of Defence, we have a contract with them to provide the UK space command a version of our digital twinning software as a baseline model simulation platform to support some of their future space programs,” said Dr Capon.

Dr Capon started out studying mechanical engineering, before relocating to Canberra to complete his PhD.

Like most young children growing up he dreamt of being an astronaut one day.

“I always wanted to be an astronaut but unfortunately I’m colour blind and wasn’t allowed, so I decided I’d find a way to build satellites or space stations so that I could go on them as a colourblind person,” he said.