Waratah Seed: Australia's First Industry Ride-Share Satellite

The Highlight Lecture will present Australia's first industry ride-share satellite, called Waratah Seed-1, including its goals, its route to funding, its clients and payload providers, and its multiple successes in space. Waratah, from the Eora First Nation word “warada”, meaning “seen from afar” and “beautiful”, is perfect for a satellite in space and is the name of an endemic genus of Australian trees, while “Seed” corresponds to the project’s desired role in growing a strong and vibrant New South Wales and Australian space sector.
Initiated by the NSW Government’s pilot “NSW Space Qualification Mission” grant, the Waratah Seed Consortium was established to perform the mission, with the Waratah Seed-1 satellite built by the ARC Training Centre for CubeSats, UAVs and their Applications (CUAVA), centred in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney.
The Waratah Seed project's primary goal is to engage NSW based space-technology startups to fly with the mission at reduced cost, enabling them to test and demonstrate the viability and space-readiness of their technology. This ‘space heritage’ is essential to gaining investment and export opportunities for new technology. As such, the Waratah Seed-1 satellite was aimed at providing spaceflight opportunities to NSW space industry start-ups and selected commercial clients, generating development opportunities, space flight heritage, and promoting the Australian space sector. In detail, Waratah Seed has brought 6 space start-ups, three universities, and multiple companies into space together for the first time.
The Waratah Seed-1 satellite was launched on Transporter-11 with Exolaunch on 16 August 2024. It has now travelled over the Earth-Sun distance around the world and is about to pass the milestone of operating successfully in space for 12 months. Of the nine technology payloads on board Waratah Seed-1, eight are now fully commissioned, operational, and sending data files back to Earth for analysis. Waratah Seed is now entering an extended mission phase, with NSW Government having declared “Mission Success”.
The Lecture involves small satellites, industry payloads from startups, other companies and universities, and a commercial industry ride-share project. These themes link strongly to the global space sector. They also address the development of space heritage for startups, companies, and academia working together, plus the sustainability and resilience of the space sector in Australia and globally. Examples sourced from Waratah Seed-1 payloads include novel solar cells, new spacecraft subsystem technologies, GNSS reflectometry, and the ionospheric environment and space debris. Future prospects will be mentioned also, with opportunities for a series of Waratah Seed satellites under consideration.

Speaker

Iver CAIRNS

Director of CUAVA, the ARC Training Centre for CubeSats, UAVs, and Their Applications Professor in Space Physics, The University of Sydney

Australia

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