19. Australia, we’re going to the Moon!

This week, the Australian Space Agency officially announced their Trailblazer lunar rover program, as well as a second round of Demonstrator grants. We also have a new astronaut program for Australians, Waratah Seed cubesat payloads, and look at the challenges facing Optus as a GEO satellite operator.

ASA Trailblazer & Demonstrator grant programs:

• Twitter announcement, including rover video
• Minister’s announcement: Aussie space industry to blaze a trail to the moon
• Trailblazer grants
• Demonstrator Mission grants
• NASA announcement from October: NASA, Australia sign agreement to add rover to future moon mission

Australian astronauts:

• Saber Astronautics and Axiom Space to develop Australian astronaut programs

State government grants:

• NSW co-funding $366k in local space projects

Satellite news:

• Waratah Seed payload teams
• Waratah Seed WS-1 Payload Competition Awards - event coming up on 16 December
• Fleet raises A$36M in funding to expand satellite IoT network
• Fleet plans to fully 3D print next-generation Alpha constellation
• Optus-11 to launch on Ariane 6
• Optus’s partnership with Telesat’s beleaguered LEO constellation:
  • Optus to partner with Telesat on LEO constellation (2018)
  • Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket to launch Telesat’s LEO constellation (2019)
  • Telesat plans dual IPOs, faces challenges with spectrum, manufacturing and launch (Nov 2021)

Launch services:

• Black Sky Aerospace launches solid rocket to 10km in Queensland:
  • Sky News interview: Australia re-enters the space race with homegrown rocket (video, 4 min)
  • BITSCore satellite cyber-security and ride-share algorithms

Community news:

• Nominations open for Australian Space Awards 2022

Upcoming events:

• 13th Australian Space Forum, Adelaide, Thursday 3 March 2022
• Australian Space Summit 2022, Sydney, Thursday 24 March 2022
  • To be followed in the evening by the Australian Space Awards dinner

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Thanks for listening!

Errata:

• While talking about Telesat’s constellation, I said spectrum is assigned by the FCC, when it is actually assigned by the ITU.