Last week, Space Centre Australia revealed it was set to work with NASA on an audacious proposal to launch satellites via military aircraft.

The plan – similar to that pioneered by Virgin Orbit – has already begun testing at the US space agency’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia using a modified C-130J Super Hercules.

In this episode of the Space Connect podcast, SCA’s chief executive, James Palmer, discusses how his team plans to do it and if it could lead to a closer collaboration with the US space agency.

If you have been paying attention to the news for the past few weeks, you might have heard about a “city-destroying” asteroid – 2024 YR4 – spotted late last year that had the potential to impact Earth in 2032.

While the chances of 2024 YR4 hitting us were once thought to be as high as 3 per cent, they have, fortunately, since been revised down to near zero – but with new asteroids and other objects being spotted all the time, our luck at avoiding the big ones may not hold forever.

Fortunately, the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN), comprising astronomers and organisations around the world, is on the case, cataloguing and tracking potentially hazardous asteroids and near-Earth objects to keep the risk of being caught by surprise to a minimum.

Professor Ed Kruzins of UNSW Canberra is one member of the IAWN and he joins the Space Connect Podcast to discuss how asteroids are tracked, what might happen on an impact – and what we could do to prevent one.

This week, ELO2 Consortium beat out rival AROSE to win the right to create Australia’s upcoming lunar rover.

The rover is designed to collect regolith, or moon soil, that will eventually be turned into oxygen to support a permanent NASA base.

It’s arguably the biggest and most exciting project Australia’s space sector has ever been involved with, and will work in tandem with NASA’s Artemis mission to return humans to the lunar surface.

Here, host Adam Thorn interviews two of the key figures at ELO2 overseeing the project: Lunar Outpost’s Joseph Kenrick and EPE Oceania’s Ben Sorensen.

Space Centre Australia plans to build a spaceport in far north Queensland that it hopes will become like an international airport for launch vehicles.

However, unlike its local rivals, it believes it can one day host larger rockets manufactured by companies such as SpaceX.

In this episode, SCA’s founder and CEO, James Palmer, joins host Adam Thorn to talk about the latest developments as well as the appointment of its new chairman, Scott Morrison.

The pair also discuss the latest industry topics, including the high-profile cancelling of the JP 9102 tender with Lockheed Martin.

In 1999, an archived speech was discovered that had been written for US President Richard Nixon 30 years before in case a disaster on the Apollo 11 mission left the astronauts with no hope of recovery.

Thankfully, that speech never had to be given – but what if it had? What if some key component on the lunar lander had failed, stranding Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon, to slowly run out of oxygen as the world watched in horror?

It’s a question asked by author David Dyer in his new novel, This Kingdom of Dust, which provides a fictionalised look at just such a scenario.

In this Space Connect podcast, he talks to Jake Nelson about NASA’s concerns with the Apollo program, how the world might have reacted, and whether the enthusiasm for space travel so prevalent in the 1960s can be recaptured.

In October, Scott Morrison was surprisingly unveiled as the new chairman of Space Centre Australia, the planned spaceport in Far North Queensland.

The move has the potential to hugely disrupt Australia’'s launch sector, which already has four spaceports scattered around the country.

Now, a few weeks later, the former prime minister joins Robert Dougherty in our studio in North Sydney.

The pair discuss the new government’s cuts to the space sector, whether the industry will recover, and how Australia can take advantage of its geographical advantages to become a leader in launch.

From 29 September to 25 November, Earth will have a new temporary ‘mini moon’.

Named 2024 PT5, the object is actually an asteroid from the Arjuna asteroid group that will be captured by Earth’s gravity for 57 days.

It’s so small and faint that it won’t be visible to the eye or even with small telescopes, but it will be visible to larger telescopes.

Astrophysicist Dr Laura Driessen, from the University of Sydney, talks through the history of mini moons and what the rare discovery means.

In 2013, Swedish researchers discovered that beetles used the Milky Way to navigate at night, realising its fixed point in the sky could help them roll dung balls in a straight line.

Now, a decade later, researchers at the University of South Australia (UniSA) are using that breakthrough as inspiration for a new project aimed at improving navigation for satellites.

They have developed a computer vision system that reliably measures the orientation of the Milky Way, which could one day lead to a back-up method of stabilising satellites in low light.

Here, Professor Javaan Chahl, who oversaw the initiative, discusses how the plan works.