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After serving in the army and as an undercover police officer, Andrew Curran decided to pursue engineering as a mature age student — even while he was living in witness protection. He has helped develop South Australia’s first private launch space launch facility.

Andrew grew up on farms in Victoria and New South Wales, before serving in the Australian Army for three years and then joining the NSW Police. There, he served 10 years, almost four of them as an undercover police operative involved in the covert investigation of major crimes such as murder, armed robbery and drug supply.

After leaving the Police, he received honours in civil and structural engineering at the University of Southern Queensland. During his studies, Andrew and his young family were required to go into witness protection due to his past undercover work with NSW Police. After graduating, he worked for a number of firms in Australia and overseas before joining space company Southern Launch as General Manager - Infrastructure in February 2020.

Andrew’s role involved the approvals, design and construction management for Southern Launch’s rocket launch facilities south of Port Lincoln and north of Ceduna. There are multiple aspects of the projects which have never been presented to the Australian Government before and have required the development of new techniques for the analysis of project impacts.

Having recently finished at Southern Launch, Andrew shares over three years of industry experience.

He will discuss the development of the space industry, how it is changing and what that means for business in Australia.