The idea of this podcast series is to highlight how Australian space technology valuably intersects with our lives and the services we use down here on Earth - so, to wrap things up neatly for Season 1, we’re looking at some Australian companies that have found ways to ‘spin out’ their space technology to serve needs on Earth, or ‘spin in’ to the space industry by pushing their Earth-based technology to new extremes... quite literally going from Outback To Orbit. Hear about Conflux Technology...

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...

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...

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...

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...

To kick off Outback To Orbit, we meet a couple of people working to take Australia to the Moon. They’re coming up with brand-new, cutting-edge designs for autonomous rovers - and one of those designs will be chosen to make history later this decade in our nation’s first lunar mission. As part of NASA's Artemis program, the rover mission will support an attempt to collect lunar soil (known as regolith) and extract oxygen from it. This process will be crucial in establishing a long-term human...

Welcome to the new podcast from the Australian Space Agency, introducing you to the people and technologies shaping Australia’s space future.