Economic transition through aerospace: Paul Stocks outlines the government's approach to developing New Zealand's space industry.

• Author: Stocks, Paul

The New Zealand government has set ambitious goals for transition towards a more inclusive, sustainable, productive and low carbon emissions economy. Hikina Whakatutuki --the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE)--plays a key role in delivering policy advice and programmes to help drive this transformation, including micro-economic policy and policy leadership of the science and innovation system.

MBIE's work involves supporting the growth of knowledge-intensive, high wage, transformative economic sectors. In 2019, the government released 'Growing Innovative Industries in New Zealand: From the Knowledge Wave to the Digital Age', a milestone industry policy document to address the challenges and opportunities in an increasingly digitalised world. Amongst other objectives for other sectors, the policy outlines an ambition to establish New Zealand as the regional centre for the development of space and autonomous air transport. Work is underway on an aerospace sector strategy to shape government effort to deliver on this ambition.

Aerospace provides an opportunity to diversify our economy, including our export base. The sector is research and development intensive, while wages and education levels in aerospace are among the highest of any sector. Increasingly, aerospace technologies also underpin modern, productive economies more generally. Aerospace-enabled innovation will also be a key part of the mix of solutions to our biggest challenges, including decarbonising the economy, protecting our seas and cleaning up our waterways, improving agricultural productivity and managing natural hazards.

New opportunities

Space activities have traditionally been the domain of large government-funded scientific and security programmes and, in regard to the private sector, have been dominated by large aerospace prime contractors. Modern trends towards smaller, faster and cheaper missions mean that smaller countries with smaller budgets can now play a meaningful part in space endeavours. Ambitious scientific space missions can now be in orbit (and beyond) within a few years, rather than decades, and for tens of millions of dollars rather than billions. Many missions are even smaller in scale than that. There are also increased options for researchers and decision-makers to access remote sensing data and data analysis to deliver actionable information.

New Zealand is no stranger to space research and industry. Maramataka and celestial navigation techniques have been key aspects of matauranga Maori. We have produced world-leading space scientists and engineers, such as renowned astronomer Beatrice Tinsley and Bill Pickering, who led the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for 22 years. Since 2004, Great South has been providing ground station services critical for rocket launches and space missions from the bottom of the South Island.

New Zealand is an attractive location for space activities because of our innovation-friendly business environment, strong science and innovation system, skilled workforce and advantageous geography for launch and ground station operations. Capitalising on these advantages and global innovation trends, development of the space sector in New Zealand has accelerated in recent years.

New Zealand's space sector is primarily driven by commercial actors rather than...