Outback To Orbit

Launched in December 2023, SpIRIT is a landmark Australian nanosatellite. It’s a collaborative industry mission led by the University of Melbourne, bringing together some of the most advanced satellite technology Australia currently has to offer. It's supported by close to $7 million of grant funding from the Australian Space Agency. And it’s also an international cooperation - SpIRIT is carrying the HERMES x-ray detector from the Italian Space Agency, designed to locate high-energy gamma ray bursts in space that occur when stars die and become black holes. Just shy of halfway through the two years it will spend in orbit, SpIRIT has marked some key achievements, and there's much more to look forward to as it showcases its range of Australian innovations to the world. Our featured guests for this episode are Professor Michele Trenti (University of Melbourne) and Simone Pirrotta (Agenzia Spaziale Italiana - Italian Space Agency).

Did you know that shooting laser beams up into space is a hugely powerful way of exchanging data between spacecraft and Earth? It's called optical communications - and sending messages or pictures or other data through a laser beam is actually a thousand times better than traditional radio communication, because of the much higher frequency. Better yet, it’s happening in Australia right now. The University of Western Australia and the Australian National University are both at the forefront of this field - they've both recently established optical communications ground stations. They’re also both part of the Australasian Optical Ground Station Network, which aims to link these types of stations together across Australia and New Zealand, and provide immense new capacity for space communications in our region. Our featured guests for this episode are Associate Professor Sascha Schediwy (University of Western Australia) and Associate Professor Francis Bennet (Australian National University).

When astronauts base themselves on the Moon and beyond in the coming decades, they’ll need to be fairly self-sufficient with their health and nutrition - which includes finding quick, reliable ways to grow good-quality plants in zero gravity. As such, plant growth in space is a pivotal field for the future of human space exploration, and the lessons we learn from it will also help us improve how we approach agriculture on Earth. Excitingly, Australian researchers are the forefront of this field. The Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space and Lunaria One are two organisations supported by the Australian Space Agency making great strides forward, and they're gearing up to take their work to the Moon in the next few years. Our featured guests for this episode are Professor Matthew Gilliham (The University of Adelaide / Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space) and Lauren Fell (Lunaria One). This episode also features a bonus stroll through the Exhibition Hall at the 17th Australian Space Forum in Adelaide in July 2024!

There are thousands of satellites and other artificial objects in Earth’s orbit - and that number is constantly growing, as we depend more and more on space technology to support our everyday lives. Managing the traffic is an important part of what's known in the industry as Space Situational Awareness. On this episode, we meet a couple of Australians who are helping to stop space objects crashing into each other… or into the millions of pieces of debris flying around up there as well. Our featured guests for this episode are Jason Held (Saber Astronautics) discussing the Responsive Space Operations Centre in Adelaide, and David Shteinman (Industrial Sciences Group) talking us through the Manoeuvre Decision Support System for predicting and averting collisions.