Texas is fast becoming the center of America’s new space frontier—a hub fueling a multibillion-dollar race beyond Earth. In this modern gold rush to the stars, one thing is clear: the companies are here, and now the search is on for the people who will make it all possible.
From SpaceX to Blue Origin, and now Firefly Aerospace—fresh off a public offering on the Nasdaq—Texas has become home base for private space innovation. “Texas is huge,” says Dr.LeonVanstone with the Space Workforce Incubator for Texas, or SWIFT. “. Firefly just literally went public. That is a Texas born and bred institution. Space X started in California. They came here. Blue Origin is here.”
That presence has sparked a scramble for skilled workers. To meet the demand, SWIFT and Austin Community College (ACC) are building the backbone of a new workforce—one designed for a future that’s already taking shape above the Central Texas skyline.
“People don’t realize Texas is a giant hub for space,” says Dr.GarrettGroves, ACC’s Vice Chancellor for Strategic Initiatives. “There is a space port that just opened in Williamson County, trying to understand what that means where we launch rockets into space and it’s one of the budding new industries that is going to determine how economies grow and change.”
NASA has taken notice. The agency isn’t just watching from afar—it’s joining in. NASA is teaming up with ACC and SWIFT to host a two-day international Space Apps Challenge in Austin, connecting local students to more than 6,000 participants worldwide.
ACC will serve as the Central Texas site for the event, where middle schoolers, high schoolers, and college students will dive into NASA’s open-source data sets to tackle questions scientists are still grappling with. Their mission: to dream up resilient habitats for space, use AI to identify exoplanets, and push the limits of what’s possible.
“Space isn’t for spectators,” says Vanstone. “They are our space cowboys. Right. Out there, changing the world and SWIFT is about doing anything possible to enable those people to go out there and do just that.”