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 videoMinister's announcement: Aussie space industry to blaze a trail to the moonTrailblazer grantsDemonstrator Mission grantsNASA 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 teamsWaratah Seed WS-1 Payload Competition Awards - event coming up on 16 DecemberFleet raises A$36M in funding to expand satellite IoT networkFleet plans to fully 3D print next-generation Alpha constellationOptus-11 to launch on Ariane 6Optus'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 2022Australian Space Summit 2022, Sydney, Thursday 24 March 2022To be followed in the evening by the Australian Space Awards dinner

About the show:

Visit our website for show notes and all our episodes: aussiespacecast.com.Thanks to all our patrons for supporting the show. Check out our member benefits at aussiespacecast.com/support.If you enjoyed Aussie Space Cast, please share and rate or review the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Intro music is Afronauts by Crowander.Chapter images are copyright for their respective organisations.You can follow @AussieSpaceCast on Twitter or on LinkedIn.Please send any corrections, feedback or ideas to [email protected].

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.