Hello JustSpace readers, and welcome to our second newsletter of 2026. This month we’re pleased to bring you a guest feature by Pixel Hodgson, a Space Technology student at Swinburne University in Melbourne, Australia.

The Overlooked Power of Neurodiversity in Aerospace

Pixel Hodgson

In the country I call home, Australia, people have lived on these lands for tens of thousands of years. They’ve cast their gaze upon the stars and planets above, ascribing stories and mythologies still passed along today. Many people across the world do it too, only now our stories are of metallic emissaries crafted by human hands, cast out to explore new landscapes. Despite hundreds of generations of stargazers and storytellers, many of Australia’s citizens, and the world’s, have gradually lost interest in space.

The majority of people can rarely name more than a few moons, know only of the Space Shuttle, maybe Apollo’s Saturn V, and SpaceX’s latest launch vehicles, and have all but tuned out of the latest cosmic endeavours. Much of this is due to the lack of major spaceflight events recently – Millennials and Gen Z have lived through what is effectively a space exploration drought. All the prior generations have grown up and lived through miraculous events. The first interplanetary spacecraft, every “Artist’s Illustration” turning to a real photo, the majesty of the outer solar system from Voyager’s flybys, and the first robotic landings on Mars with Viking and Pathfinder. Up until now, the newer generations have had little to be excited about: the first photograph of a black hole, several little-publicised asteroids being investigated up close, and New Horizons delivering the first photos of Pluto – a world which, to many of us, had never been a planet in our lifetime.

This lack of major events has led to fewer of the younger generations becoming truly invested in space, while the older generations remain eager. Here in Australia, only 55% of people polled think that it is important to invest in space, even if there is no immediate benefit.1 There is, however, a group that remains deeply invested in space: neurodivergent people. I, personally, am Autistic, and this has not only helped my interest in space, but also catapulted it forward beyond many neurotypical people. In Australia, a third of capable and qualified neurodiverse people are unemployed,2 even when eager to join the workforce. The way that our brains work is often specially suited to space-related fields, thinking in unique ways to make it through the world. Almost everything around us is suited specifically towards neurotypical brains: bright lights, loud sounds, and textural clashes that we must deal with, rarely speaking up to avoid being seen as an inconvenience (how many employers see us, as more trouble than we’re worth). To navigate this neurotypical world, we have had to learn our own methods of thinking and evaluation to simply survive the environment, and this provides benefits when it comes to critical thinking in engineering, astronomy, and other complex fields.

I myself have had direct experience with this, back in 2023 at Swinburne University. They held a competition between various high schools across the state of Victoria, hosting weekly sessions to develop mission concepts focused on specific fields and niches in spaceflight. My team and I developed unique ideas to tackle these issues; a modular telescope assembled in orbit from individual CubeSats, an entirely analogue nuclear-powered spaceplane diving in and out of Jupiter’s atmosphere, and other innovative concepts. In the culmination of the program, I spent two weeks straight developing the mission, day and night, whilst my teammates focused on the upcoming exams. I drafted a mission to an asteroid beyond Neptune, a component of a binary system named Manwë-Thorondor. I broke through my typical social anxiety to communicate with industry professionals with genuine experience in not only trajectory and spacecraft design, but also actual operational experience on spacecraft ops at Kuiper belt objects. That wholehearted and earnest dedication, fuelled by my neurodiverse special interest, helped my team’s proposal win the challenge. Because of this, my learning and interest were propelled even further forward, with Swinburne giving us hands-on experience with experiments being sent to the International Space Station, and letting us see how the Keck Observatory is controlled during a genuine observation session. This challenge, while not the start of my special interest in space, helped transform that interest into tangible enthusiasm and build a pathway to eventually working in the industry.

That’s the key to boosting spaceflight and involving the younger generations. Hyperfixation and special interests are incredibly powerful forces for neurodiverse people. For the readers who aren’t aware, these are experiences special to neurodivergent people, especially those with Autism. It is effectively the same as love, focusing entirely on a specific topic with all the dedication in your brain. It’s everything you think about, everything you focus on, something that gives you purpose. Across the world, it is estimated that 1% of the population has autism spectrum disorder,3 meaning 83 million people globally. That’s the population of Germany, or a quarter of the United States’. Certainly not all of these people will be hyperfixated on space, but considering how prevalent space is as a theme for developing children, there may be hundreds of thousands of Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha people with a special interest in space. These are people who may otherwise be discredited for their need for accommodation, who could massively contribute to the space industry and world development as a whole. The ability to focus on a single topic with the pure, unfettered dedication that someone with a special interest can provide can lead to enormous progress and world-changing innovation. These STEM hyperfixators are likely more than eager to participate in the industry– I certainly am– but not every community provides a challenge like the one my university held, or the slots to accommodate all willing people.

This type of competition has the potential to be a tremendous tool for incorporating underexposed neurodivergent people, and surveying for talent. More rewards can even be provided for extra incentive, such as hands-on industry experience, tours of relevant facilities, and potentially even scholarships. Outreach programs such as these could serve to find and motivate future leaders of the field, leveraging the increased dedication that comes with neurodiversity. At the current rate, Gen Z students are highly disadvantaged in the aerospace industry, making programs such as this a lifeline to prevent a future brain drain, benefit the entire global aerospace sector, and bypass such an issue arising for the growing Gen Alpha.

Neurodiverse people like me are underrepresented in the industry, when we have the ability to focus like nobody else, and to utilise our special critical thinking skills to produce innovative designs and plans. Project management can come to us easily too, leading programs through dark times, eager to see it through and willing to persist.

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