READ

​The ups and downs of Perth space startups

​​We catch up with two WA space startups: one that wants to send things to space and another that wants to bring them down.
​The ups and downs of Perth space startups
Image credit: ​Picosat Systems/Astrofest

It’s a classic WA startup tale — Conrad Pires and Stuart McAndrew met at the ESA deep space tracking station in New Norcia. Stuart was building a prototype satellite at home, while Conrad had a business degree and was looking for a change.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Reaching for the sky

Stuart and Conrad’s Picosat is seriously tiny, measuring just 5 centimetres a side. And because getting stuff into space is expensive, the smaller you can make your satellite, the bigger your edge can be.

View Larger

​The Picosat prototype in front of a zero-g test plane

Image credit: ​Picosat Systems/ICRAR
​The Picosat prototype in front of a zero-g test plane

“So we’ve got this little satellite, we’re going to put it into space, and it’ll beam home pictures of Australia on the amateur radio band to a receiver that we’re building, and we’ll be able to look at pictures of Australia from space,” says Conrad.

The pair are currently working on their first prototype using off-the-shelf components, but the long-term plan is more ambitious. Picosat Systems wants to be a one-stop shop for businesses looking for satellites on the cheap.

“Putting stuff into space is quite challenging. Not only do you need to build that satellite, you need to test it, get it certified by the people who own the rocket, make sure you’ve got launch insurance and get government sign-off.”

“We’d take care of all of that for you. Then you have the solution, and you don’t need to worry about all the bits and pieces in between.”

Picosat reckons WA is a great place to be when it comes to space. We’ve got the ground stations and the skills. But perhaps more importantly, we’ve got the customers. There’s a huge number of businesses in WA that rely on satellites to do their job.

“As far as we know, we’re the first small satellite solutions provider in Western Australia,” Conrad says, “so that’s kind of cool!”

​Picosat Co-founder Conrad Pires speaking at TEDx UWA

​Picosat Co-founder Conrad Pires speaking at TEDx UWA

Getting down to business

If you spin this around, you’ll find another WA space startup trying to solve the opposite problem: bringing things from space back down to Earth.

“I had this scientific background and design knowledge, and I’ve always been a space nut,” says Mike Le Page, founder of Exodus Space Systems.

Inspired by films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Mike set his sights on trying to recreate the iconic spinning space station.

“Exodus is a solution to the problems I saw with people trying to build spin gravity. We’re trying to build much smaller craft that also spin, but we’re going to use that spin motion to address a different problem—space debris.”

View Larger

A 3D-printed prototype of Exodus’s Deployable Toroid Array

Image credit: ​Exodus Space Systems
A 3D-printed prototype of Exodus’s Deployable Toroid Array

Debris tends to stay in space because there’s no air resistance to slow it down. While there are several projects out there that are trying to clean up space, Exodus has a plan to turn that space trash into Earth cash.

“We clear out specific regions of space where there are a lot of satellites operating, and if you’ve got a satellite up there, there’s value in that.”

Exodus’s spinning satellite will deploy a small amount of gas in the regions they’re paid to patrol, almost like tiny pockets of atmosphere. These pockets of atmosphere cause any debris caught in their bubble to slow down and fall out of orbit.

A 3D printed demo of Exodus Space Systems’ Deployable Toroid Array.

A 3D printed demo of Exodus Space Systems’ Deployable Toroid Array.

“We think of it as pre-emptive satellite insurance,” says Mike.

And WA is the perfect place to do it—we’re kind of experts in the whole debris-tracking thing.

“Space is no longer something you’ve got to go overseas to get involved in,” Mike says. “We’re right where we want to be.”

​Rocky McGellin
About the author
​Rocky McGellin
Rocky is a freelance writer and a planetarium presenter at Scitech. He has a Masters in Science Communication from UWA. He enjoys science fiction books, and his favourite solar system object is Epimetheus.
View articles
Rocky is a freelance writer and a planetarium presenter at Scitech. He has a Masters in Science Communication from UWA. He enjoys science fiction books, and his favourite solar system object is Epimetheus.
View articles

NEXT ARTICLE

We've got chemistry, let's take it to the next level!

Get the latest WA science news delivered to your inbox, every fortnight.

Republish

Creative Commons Logo

Republishing our content

We want our stories to be shared and seen by as many people as possible.

Therefore, unless it says otherwise, copyright on the stories on Particle belongs to Scitech and they are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

This allows you to republish our articles online or in print for free. You just need to credit us and link to us, and you can’t edit our material or sell it separately.

Using the ‘republish’ button on our website is the easiest way to meet our guidelines.

Guidelines

You cannot edit the article.

When republishing, you have to credit our authors, ideally in the byline. You have to credit Particle with a link back to the original publication on Particle.

If you’re republishing online, you must use our pageview counter, link to us and include links from our story. Our page view counter is a small pixel-ping (invisible to the eye) that allows us to know when our content is republished. It’s a condition of our guidelines that you include our counter. If you use the ‘republish’ then you’ll capture our page counter.

If you’re republishing in print, please email us to let us so we know about it (we get very proud to see our work republished) and you must include the Particle logo next to the credits. Download logo here.

If you wish to republish all our stories, please contact us directly to discuss this opportunity.

Images

Most of the images used on Particle are copyright of the photographer who made them.

It is your responsibility to confirm that you’re licensed to republish images in our articles.

Video

All Particle videos can be accessed through YouTube under the Standard YouTube Licence.

The Standard YouTube licence

  1. This licence is ‘All Rights Reserved’, granting provisions for YouTube to display the content, and YouTube’s visitors to stream the content. This means that the content may be streamed from YouTube but specifically forbids downloading, adaptation, and redistribution, except where otherwise licensed. When uploading your content to YouTube it will automatically use the Standard YouTube licence. You can check this by clicking on Advanced Settings and looking at the dropdown box ‘License and rights ownership’.
  2. When a user is uploading a video he has license options that he can choose from. The first option is “standard YouTube License” which means that you grant the broadcasting rights to YouTube. This essentially means that your video can only be accessed from YouTube for watching purpose and cannot be reproduced or distributed in any other form without your consent.

Contact

For more information about using our content, email us: particle@scitech.org.au

Copy this HTML into your CMS
Press Ctrl+C to copy