The Gold Coast company produced a physical, to-scale column of regulation paperwork for the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) 2025 in NSW earlier this year.
IAC 2025 reportedly gathered more than 7,500 delegates from 99 countries to the International Convention Centre Sydney, including a Pacific delegation with ministerial representation from Cook Islands and Solomon Islands. In addition, more than 19,500 space enthusiasts of all ages reportedly attended the congress’ free Space Day on 3 October.
The week-long congress delivered thousands of technical, inspiring and futuristic presentations from more than 450 international and domestic exhibitors. Of note, the Australian Space Agency showcased a 4.6-billion-year-old sample from asteroid Ryugu.
“This stack of paper is a visual representation of one of the sets of requirements and standards that we digitise. These are the European Standards, called ECSS (European Cooperation for Space Standardization),” according to Starbound Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder Dr Sheila Gough Kenyon.
“These are all of the ECSS standards that are currently published. This paper here, this is what tells us how to do things well. ESA have 100 per cent success rate; ESA build things excellently, and this tells us how to build for space well - but it can slow us down if we’re trying to read through everything, every time, for every mission.
“These standards are really important, they have all the guidance we need. We are offering a way to navigate our customers to the right points that need to be focused on for specific missions.
“We use the term heat mapping. So if you upload details of your project into our ‘Virgil’ system, Virgil can heat map where in the standards you need to pay attention to, to really demonstrate to a regulator, or to your customer, or to your supply chain, that you are compliant with best practice.
“We have recently raised our first institutional funds and have the backing of Queensland government financially and logistically to be here. Their support has really made it possible for us as a small business to be here and to showcase the amazing products that we’ve built.”