An Australian company that organised trips to NASA for school students has collapsed, leaving parents in Australia and New Zealand who had prepaid thousands of dollars for trips out of pocket.
Actura Australia Pty Ltd went into liquidation on June 14, 2024. The company and its wholly-owned New Zealand subsidiary, Actura New Zealand Limited, offered out-of-classroom STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) “experiences” to senior school students across the arts and media, ocean science, earth science, and space fields.
Its Senior Space School program, run in conjunction with CASE (California Association for STEAM Education), offers ” a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see inside NASA.” The CASE/Atura partnership has sent over 5,000 students from 500 schools worldwide to visit NASA since 2015.
Under the program, senior school students visited NASA’s Johnson Space Center to view training replicas, engineering prototypes under development, and humanoid robots. Students also had the opportunity to visit local US space industry companies.
Australia and New Zealand company records show the two Actura entities were run by Sydney-based Tin (Charles) Chung Chung. The New Zealand company was owned by the Australian entity which, in turn, is owned by a Seychelles-based entity called Actura International Corporation. Actura Australia Pty Ltd has shut down its website and Facebook account. However, its LinkedIn page remains active and until last week, was posting about upcoming events.
“Actura has ceased its operations effective today in both Australia and New Zealand and Westburn Advisory has been appointed to manage the liquidation process of Actura Australia Pty Ltd,” Actura Australia Director and CEO Charles Chung said on June 15. “As a result, all scheduled 2024 and 2025 international study program expeditions are cancelled.”
“The company’s cashflow has been severely affected by the compounding financial effects of a precarious recovery from the Covid-19 global pandemic, a large increase in costs of supply coupled with significant reductions in registrations due to the ongoing increases in the costs of living being experienced by families.”
Social media posts by parents, primarily coming out of New Zealand, suggest some had paid up to NZD12,000 (AUD11,100) for the space program trips scheduled to run into 2025. One New Zealand parent notes students from Indonesia, Singapore, and Australia have had their trips abruptly cancelled.
“Actura is the company who is organising space school expedition for high school students. I’ve enrolled my boy into this program. 12k has being paid, and it was meant to leave in two weeks,” the parent posted on Facebook. “But last night (June 14), they sent out the email to cancel the program and saying the company went liquidated and have no financial resources to provide customer refunds.”
Australian and New Zealand Actura employees are also out of jobs, with no immediate way to claim owed salaries and entitlements until Westburn determines the company’s fate.
NASA operates a massive school student program out of its Office of Education at the Johnson Space Center. The space agency says the progam promotes the importance of STEAM subjects and raises student awareness of future employment opportunities in the space sector.
