On June 19th, 2024, we were delighted to welcome over 80 students and educators from the BinarX Student Payload Development Program 2024-2026 to Curtin University, where they came together to present their Mission Concept Review Presentations. The day was a great success thanks to the efforts of the participating students and teachers, as well as the support of members of the Binar Space Program, the broader SSTC, P.A.S.T. (Undergrad Cubesat Team) and Curtin STEM Outreach!
The Mission Concept Review (MCR), much like in NASA’s own project assessments, marks the first major milestone in the students’ journeys to design, build, test and fly payloads of their own on board future Binar cube sat missions. It’s the moment when budding scientists and engineers get to pitch their cool mission ideas. They lay out what they want to achieve, how they plan to do it, and what they hope to discover. Just like space industry professionals, these students face a thorough evaluation of their ideas’ practicality, creativity, and scientific value. The MCR isn’t just about proving themselves; it’s about fine-tuning their dreams and getting one step closer to turning those dreams into real-life missions. It’s all about sparking that passion for exploration and innovation that can take them anywhere.
Our whole team had such a positive experience interacting with all of the students, with the teachers and even learning a bit more about the work of our own colleagues and students within Curtin University. We were delighted to see a lot of chatting and collaboration between not only teachers, but between the student payload teams across different schools as well, discussing how they might share payload data and results to all form a better understanding of all the fascinating things they’ll be observing when they fly their payloads on future Binar cube sat missions!
This community we’re building means so much to all of us. We can see the students really taking pride and ownership over the work they’re doing, and our whole team was really moved by what we saw as we continue on our mission to put space in the hands of WA.
BinarX Student Payload Development Program 2024-2026 Key Stats:
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# of Participating schools: 9 (8 Perth Metro, 1 Regional)
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# of Students Participating: 114
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# of Student Payloads in Development: 15
- Student Participants by Gender:
- Male: 49.1%
- Female: 46.5%
- Not Specified: 4.4%
