Cicada Spotlight: Matt Ryall
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Space exploration is rapidly growing and the possibility of establishing life on other planets is becoming more of a reality. Humans require mechanisms and innovation to explore space in a sustainable way. Matt Ryall, Founder and CEO at Mawson Rovers, is one of our Space residents at the National Space Industry Hub and is Australia's first inventor of rover vehicles to "support sustainable human exploration of space". "Powered by well-tested AI and autonomy software", rovers help "take care of many mundane tasks as we explore and expand life to new worlds".
Read our conversation below to learn from Matt's defining experiences in the space sector as he navigates through impactful connections in the space ecosystem to transform his idea into business.
"Being a resident at the National Space Industry Hub in Sydney has enabled so many great connections and helped us build out our local and international networks."
What is your vision with Mawson Rovers?
I started Mawson Rovers with the vision of helping humans explore beyond Earth. We live in a unique time, where we now have the low-cost orbital launch capability to enable exploration and establishing life on other planets. I wanted to help achieve that global ambition and have been looking for a way to support it from my home in Sydney.
I saw an opportunity in space robotics. Despite our new technology, humans remain the same biological animals that we have been for millions of years, with inconvenient needs like air, water and a comfortable temperature and pressure. Keeping mammals alive in space will always be challenging, so I think there is a need to use robots – powered by well-tested AI and autonomy software – to take care of many mundane tasks as we explore and expand life to these new worlds.
What has been your involvement in Australia's space industry?
Well, first I was an observer and mentor/investor in the Australian space industry for several years. Back in 2018, I joined Startmate, a local startup accelerator program, to help mentor space startups. I also invested my time and money with a few early stage Australian space startups, like NextAero and HEO Robotics, to help them get off the ground with some really novel ideas. And I was cheering when the Australian Space Agency launched in 2018, and watched closely as some early Australian space companies like Gilmour and Fleet landed significant VC funding.
In 2021, I decided to dive deeper. I started a space podcast, called Aussie Space Cast. The idea was to analyse the industry, understand the space agency’s activities and interview people who were working in space. I wanted to find a big opportunity that I could join at the early stages or start myself.
When the Australian Space Agency announced their lunar rover Trailblazer grant program in October 2021, I saw a unique opportunity. I knew from all my work there was nobody building rovers in Australia. Unless I did something, this project would be taking a rover built overseas and slapping an Australian flag on it – yuck. So I hunted down some smart robotics people at a local university to join me as co-founders, and in December 2021, Mawson Rovers was born.
You were in product development for 14 years at Atlassian. How did you navigate the transition to space entrepreneurship?
Good question. I always had the desire to start my own company. In fact, when I joined Atlassian in 2006, I originally planned to work there for two years, just to watch how Mike and Scott ran the company, so then I could start my own. Of course, one thing led to another, and it was almost 15 years before I finally took the leap.
But this also meant I’m in a position of great privilege when starting a company. I have some personal funds I can invest in it. I have over a decade of commercial experience in a company that scaled from 20 to 5000 people, including managing teams and working through legal and HR stuff. So all that stuff is fine.
The biggest challenge with moving to space is how different the business is to software. Software has relatively low cost to build, you can host it almost for free in the cloud, and if you build a good product you can get thousands or even millions of customers.
Compared to software, space hardware is really expensive. Even building prototypes costs thousands of dollars. The customers are very few, and most of them don’t have much money to spare. Because you need expensive engineers, expensive tooling and have a high input costs, the margins are very thin. I don’t think anyone who works in the space industry is getting free lunches at work, like many tech companies do.
I don’t think there’s a solution to this, it is just different and something that takes some getting used to. I didn’t start Mawson Rovers to get rich, but rather to have a big impact in this new industry from Australia. With luck, we will be able to do that.
What does Mawson Rovers hope to achieve this year, and how can our community help?
First off, the Cicada community is great, and has already helped so much. We met our first two clients through Cicada-organised events. At the inaugural Space Connect event in February, when the Space Hub launched, we met our partners at UTS who wanted to collaborate on a satellite payload. Then, later in the year, we were giving a demo to some prospective residents, and ANT61 reached out afterwards to see if we could help with their first mission.
Those are just two examples. Being a resident at the National Space Industry Hub in Sydney has enabled so many great connections and helped us build out our local and international networks.
As for goals this year, we plan to launch our first satellite payload into space with our partner UTS. UTS have developed a novel heat management technology for satellites that will unlock improvements in measuring the Earth’s environment and addressing climate change. We are proud to support that effort with bespoke electronics and software for their payload.
Our R1 rover prototype is also progressing, and we hope to secure commercial customers for further development and use on the Earth and Moon. We should have it driving around Cicada in the next few weeks!
What are you currently reading, watching, or listening to that you would recommend to the Space Hub community?
- In space and sci-fi, I always recommend the Expanse books. The main series recently wrapped up, so now is a great time to get into those if you haven’t already. I also enjoyed Andy Weir’s latest book, called Project Hail Mary.
- On TV, the alternate history of For All Mankind is a great watch, and I also really enjoyed Andor – probably the best drama I watched last year.
- Lately I've come across a lot of negative ideas about space exploration and even humanity generally (e.g. “Aren’t we just going to trash the Moon?”, or “Wouldn’t things be better if humans just didn’t exist?"), and find it useful to keep some context about the progress we are making. Factfulness is a good book by Hans Rosling on this.
- The Our World In Data website is a great source of data on some of the challenges but also the progress we’re making with ending poverty, fighting disease, restoring animal habitats, addressing climate change, and much more. As a community, I hope we can agree that even though there are things to improve, many things are actually going well (you just don’t read about them) and we can remain excited and motivated to build a better future together.
Interested to learn more insights in space tech? Read our other space related blogs.