International Astronautical Congress 2025

Learn more about the International Astronautical Congress 2025 and the opportunities available for students and teachers to explore the theme ‘Sustainable Space : Resilient Earth’.

IAC2025 initiatives

The International Astronautical Congress 2025 (IAC2025), held in Sydney from 29 September to 3 October, is a unique opportunity for NSW students and educators to engage with global space experts, explore STEM careers, and showcase their talents.

As part of the NSW Government’s co-hosting of the event with the Australian Space Agency, the NSW Department of Education is supporting a range of aligned and adjacent programs

Student curiosity, creativity, and STEM skills for a sustainable future are inspired through:

Sustainable Space : Resilient Earth

The IAC2025 programs and competition align with the IAC2025 theme, ‘Sustainable Space : Resilient Earth’ and strengthen Australia’s role in inspiring and developing the next generation of scientists, engineers, technologists and explorers.

Watch Australian astronaut Katherine Bennell-Pegg outline the scientific research on the International Space Station aimed at creating a sustainable future.

Watch 'International Space Station: Research for a sustainable future' (4:43).

Katherine Bennell-Pegg discusses research on the ISS that helps to build a more sustainable future on Earth

Annie Handmer

What can you share about the scientific research that's currently happening on the ISS that could help us build a better, brighter, more sustainable future here on Earth?

Katherine Bennell-Pegg

I love those questions, Annie, because I think that it frees people and gives them, you know, the personal permission to think outside the box, which is something that we often need to remind ourselves to do. In space, you are definitely outside the box. So, Rebecca spoke to it beautifully at the beginning about the many different wonders that there are in space. And what we can achieve through space. Space ultimately is, you know, an eye in the sky from which we can see phenomenon around the world. We can see bush fires, we can see floods, we can see industry, we can see traces of people moving around the world to detect issues like modern slavery through looking at brick kilns in certain areas for example. What we can see from space, we can connect with information, and what we can connect we can inform with information like timing data, which is used in our ATMs, and map data, which is used in our phones or by the tractors that Australians use in remote agricultural areas. But it's also a place to do science.

On the International Space Station, the breadth of science and technological research you can do blew me away every day on the astronaut training. I'd worked in space for almost 15 years and I had no idea of what can be done up there. The International Space Station is huge. It's 109 metres across, which is almost the size of an Australian soccer field. And the internal volume that has air in it is about the same as a passenger part of an A380, or a five bedroom house. It's got a gym, it's got two galleys where you can eat. It's got two toilets. It's got a beautiful window from which you can look out and it is filled with scientific experiment facilities. So, basically what we do up there is unique. And it's unique because the gravity vector is removed. All life on Earth, all life as we know it evolved on Earth and it evolved under gravity, one g of gravity specifically. And when we go to space, we can decouple variables in the experiment. Perhaps some of you have learned about experiment variables. We can see, you know, things like how cancer metabolism works more clearly because it's affected by gravity. We can look at things like plant growth to help us understand how we can develop more sustainable crop yields. We can look at processes in the human body.

I spoke to how astronauts and medical test subjects in space, because your body's not loaded, your bones degrade at 6 to 7 times the rate of a post-menopausal woman who's not medicated if you don't have countermeasures, which means that astronauts are used a lot for research into osteoporosis. Also immunology actually because your immune system changes. But coming back to the gravity vector on processes, you know, with crystals, crystals in space grow much, much larger and more pure. And there's two main types of crystals. One is proteins like the ones in the body. So, we can use that to look more closely through microscopes at protein related diseases. Things like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's are investigated in space. And the other type of crystal is that that comes from metals. So, we can look at creating new kinds of metal alloys and understand them better in space to inform processes on Earth.

We've had one of my astronaut colleagues, he helped to make new kind of concrete mix that emits less carbon dioxide, which is one of the greatest inputs into climate change on Earth. And there's just so much, I could go on and on, but you know, from up there, I think that one thing that's really important to me is that astronauts have a huge role in talking about how precious our planet is when they come home. A lot of astronauts have experience what's called the overview effect. When they look back at the Earth and they see, you know, a thin blue line that is our atmosphere. They see no borders between countries. They see, you know, bushfire smoke spread around the world, pollution plumes do the same. And they communicate that through photos and through the messages when they come home. So that goes hand in hand with the research that's done up there too.

[End of transcript]

Mission Patch Student Art Competition

Primary and secondary students across Australia are invited to take part in an exciting competition, celebrating Australia’s creativity, innovation, and leadership in space exploration.

Australian schools are invited to enter students in the Mission Patch Competition for IAC2025. A mission patch is a unique emblem that visually represents the goals, crew, and significance of a specific space mission. To enter, visit the Mission patch competition webpage.

Registration for the competition closes on Friday 29 August 2025 (Term 3 Week 6).

Finalists showcase at IAC2025

The 76th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) will be held at Darling Harbour, Sydney. All members of the public are invited to the IAC Public Day on Friday 3 October to join an inspiring celebration of space exploration.

Students who participate in the IAC2025 initiatives and are selected as finalists will be invited to attend the Public Day, where they will be recognised for their talents and achievements and have the unique opportunity to meet an astronaut.

The event will showcase the mission patch designs created by finalists, primary and secondary students from NSW schools, highlighting their creativity and vision for a sustainable space future.

Category:

  • Teaching and learning

Business Unit:

  • Curriculum
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