An Australian built and operated cube satellite has won the SmallSat Mission of the Year award at the AIAA Small Satellite Mission of the Year Awards in Salt Lake City, USA.
The Waratah Seed-1 – Australia’s first ‘rideshare’ satellite – launched 12 months ago and beat 10 rival finalists from global space experts includes NASA, the European Space Agency, and Johns Hopkins University.
An artist’s impression of Waratah Seed-1
The CubeSat, built at University of Sydney, is currently in Sun-synchronous orbit 513km above Earth and travelling at around 27,00kmh. It has a scientific and commercial payload of nine projects to test – here’s who’s on board – and prove the function and capability of their novel technologies.
After launching aboard a SpaceX mission on August 17, 2024, Waratah Seed-1 has survived double its projected lifespan, and eight of the nine local technology payloads on board were successfully demonstrated in space.
The 6U-sized satellite (roughly the size of a small microwave) was partly funded by NSW Government and developed by the ARC Training Centre for CubeSats, UAVs, and their Applications (CUAVA), based at the University of Sydney, with the support from several NSW-based partners: Saber Astronautics, Macquarie University, the Delta-V Space Hub, ACSER at UNSW and UTS.
The SmartSat CRC committed $1 million to the projects aboard.
Discussions are now underway to assess industry and funding interest in a series of new Waratah Seed missions, with Waratah Seed-2 nominally planned to launch in 2027.
The project part of CUAVA the federal government-backed ARC Training Centre for CubeSats, UAVs and their applications, was the only Australian finalist in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics SmallSat Mission of the Year awards.
Mission leader and CUAVA director Professor Iver Cairns from the University of Sydney School of Physics said they’re all thrilled with the win.
“It is testament to the engineering and scientific ingenuity of our team at the University of Sydney, UTS, Macquarie University and our industry partners at Saber Astronautics, Delta-V and the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research at UNSW,” he said.
“We thought our little Aussie satellite, packed with an unlikely nine scientific and commercial payloads, would last in space for six months. But now, just three days shy of a year in space, it is still orbiting Earth.
“It will next pass over Sydney tonight at 10.26pm, so we will give it a little wave. It shows Australia has a great future in the space industry.”
