When we launched Binar-1, we asked you what messages you’d send to space. With a little help from a much bigger version of our spacecraft, we collected over 2400 messages to space. So what happens now?
We have a huge year ahead of us here at Binar. We’ll be building and delivering our next three 1U cubesats for launch into Low Earth Orbit. We’ll be entering the second year of our BinarX high school payload program. We’re continuing to work on Binar Prospector, our mission to explore the Moon and beyond, and to publish our results from Binar-1, WA’s first space mission.
Before we jump into any of that though, we though it might be nice to take a moment to reflect on why we’re doing this.
We cracked open our Big Binar mailbox at the end of last year, after stints at the WA Museum, Astrofest, and right here at Curtin. Inside, we found 2453 messages, wishes, and drawings – but what blew us away was how many questions we got. People asked about planets and asteroids, about stars and galaxies, and about astronauts and spacecraft.
We found questions about know how things work, where they come from – but above all else, what it’s like out there in space.
Some of these were right in our wheelhouse – questions about the origins and evolution of the solar system, about small spacecraft and how to build them, and about things all space explorers have to consider, human or robotic.
Some of them, though, were about what it’s like for people in space. At 10cm on each side, sadly, we haven’t been able to send an astronaut up in Binar – so to answer those questions, we had some fun with our friends at Scitech.
Throughout January we ran several Meet The Scientist sessions at Scitech as well. We showed off part of what it’s like in space with vacuum testing equipment from our lab here at Curtin, with help from some of our freshest home-grown space talent, our 2022-23 Binar Summer Interns.
Even with Scitech’s help, there are far more questions than we could answer, and we think that’s awesome. We love to see West Australians getting curious about the universe.
So, whether you wrote a question, or more of a comment, or even just drew a picture, we’ve scanned all your messages and will be loading them on to Binar-2, Binar-3 and Binar-4 to be flown on our next mission.
Binar is built to answer exactly the kind of questions we saw people ask so often, about what it’s like out there in space. Whether it’s Earth orbit, the Moon, or beyond, our solar system is the only part of our universe that’s close enough to actually visit, and with Binar, that’s exactly what we want to do.
