Melbourne Space Lab
Innovative capability, in orbit.
The University of Melbourne Space Laboratory (MSL) is a world leader in miniaturised, high performance, SmallSat technology. With over 50 years of combined industry experience, we led the first Australian Space Agency funded space telescope mission and worked on projects from European Space Agency led missions, to reliable hardware on Mars.
Featured content
Our missions
SpIRIT
(Space Industry Responsive Intelligent Thermal)
SpIRIT was launched on the 1st December 2023 and successfully concluded mission operations in Janurary 2026, before responsibly re-entering the Earth's atmosphere in August 2026.
SpIRIT was the first satellite funded for development and launch by the Australian Space Agency, with an award of $3.95 million to the Melbourne Space Laboratory for its design, fabrication and test, and launch. The Space Industry Responsive Intelligent Thermal (SpIRIT) 6U nanosatellite was the first Australian spacecraft to host a foreign space agency payload: It’s main instrument was an advanced sensor for gamma and x-rays for astrophysics and remote sensing and was provided by the Italian Space Agency, demonstrating the international standing of MSL in the global space sector. SpIRIT also qualify several technology subsystems in-orbit, in core areas for MSL R&D (thermal management, low-latency communications, autonomous operations), and advance Australia’s electric propulsion sovereign capabilities through a partnership with Neumann Space.
Three additional Australian companies (Inovor Technologies, Sitael Australia, and Nova Systems) were partners in SpIRIT, demonstrating the strong links of MSL with local industry.
SkyHopper
SkyHopper is a mission concept under development (funded for phase A/B) for a 12U nanosatellite equipped with a low-noise, rapid response infrared telescope. SkyHopper will provide imaging at 0.8-1.7 micron with four simultaneously exposed bands over a field of view of 1.5 deg2 (2048×2048 pixel detector), with a focal plane array actively cooled to a temperature of T=140±0.5 K.
SkyHopper aims to be the first CubeSat in the world to carry out cryogenic infrared observations from space, which so far have been restricted to larger and significantly more expensive satellites, demonstrating feasibility both for astrophysics applications as well as for space-based infrared space situational awareness.
SkyScout
SkyScout is a SWaP-C optimised heat-signature sensing small satellite concept under design at the Melbourne Space Lab that enables low-cost, hypersensitive thermal characterisation and on-orbit intelligence from unresolved infrared observations.
SkyScout is designed to address the challenge of limited access to expensive, oversubscribed high-performance infrared sensors by overcoming small-satellite thermal management constraints, enabling scalable, persistent monitoring of objects in congested and contested orbital environments.
The mission will build on the over two years of flight heritage of the SpIRIT thermal management system.
Raven
Raven is an intelligent space camera designed by the Melbourne Space Laboratory and flying on Gilmour Space Technologies MMS-2 satellite in Q1 of 2027.
With a co-pointing array of lenses, Raven will be used to take images of the Earth down to 32m GSD, and process them to extract intelligence in orbit with software and edge-compute that builds on the in-space AI imaging processing heritage of the SpIRIT mission.
Raven also features 2 selfie cameras perched on a 1.8m long boom from Frond Space Systems that will enable Raven to capture selfies images of MMS-2 in orbit.