Last month, Space Connect held its Australian Space Summit and Exhibition, or AusSpace, in Sydney.

The highlight of the event though was a panel where schoolchildren were given the chance to interview three astronauts. We've got the audio so you can listen in.

The panel included Paul Scully-Power, Australia’s first-ever astronaut, who went to space in 1984; Eric Philips, who only blasted off to space on a private SpaceX mission in April; and Katherine Bennell-Pegg, the first astronaut to formally qualify under the Australian flag.

The Australian Space Summit & Exhibition was the biggest event of the year for our local industry.

In this special episode recorded at the event, Space Connect editor Adam Thorn and Defence Connect analyst Steve Kuper discuss the main takeaways.

The pair discuss the importance of AUKUS to space, the impact of government cuts to the industry and why the sector is so integral to our national defence.

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.