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.
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 presence on the Moon, which is a key goal of the Artemis program. Developing such an advanced rover will also help us do more with autonomous and remote-controlled machines back here on Earth. Our featured guests for this episode are Ben Sorensen (ELO2) and Dr Sarah Cannard (AROSE).
Welcome to the new podcast from the Australian Space Agency, introducing you to the people and technologies shaping Australia's space future.