The eye in the sky from Aotearoa

The satellite is tiny, no bigger than a loaf of bread and smaller than the first of humanity's objects to reach space-the basketball-sized Sputnik 1.

TPA-1, or to give its full name, Te Pūnaha Ātea-1 reached space on 23 June, 2025, hitching a ride on a Falcon 9 rocket launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base located on the coast north of Los Angeles.

Our most celebrated scientist Sir Ernest Rutherford once purportedly said, “We haven’t got the money, so we’ve got to think.”

Sir Ernest recognised that a tiny country at the end of the world would always struggle to match major power budgets. The only approach? Favour brainpower over budget. New Zealand’s first successful homegrown satellite exemplifies this.

TPA-1 has circled the globe, constantly controlled from the Mission Operations Control Centre in the Faculty of Engineering and Design at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland. It’s no bigger than a loaf of bread, smaller than the first of humanity’s objects to reach space, the Soviet Union’s basketball-sized Sputnik 1, on 15 May 1957.

Some eighty years later New Zealand has improbably become a space-faring nation, with as many launches last year as Russia, all courtesy of RocketLab, making New Zealand equal third with Russia, behind the US and China last year.

"TPA‑2 is essentially a space shuttlebus - we run the mission so New Zealand payload developers, from school groups to emerging space companies, can get a ride to orbit."

TPA-1 is tiny, but its reach is broad. It’s a satellite conceived of and designed here with homegrown payloads. It works well, so well, that the Government’s Space Agency has invested $283,827 in TPA-2, a sibling that will carry a range of New Zealand-developed payloads selected from an open call from industry and academia.

“The support we’ve received is channelled straight into creating flight opportunities for others,” says mission lead Dr Ben Taylor.

“TPA‑2 is essentially a space shuttlebus - we run the mission so New Zealand payload developers, from school groups to emerging space companies, can get a ride to orbit and gain the flight heritage that’s essential for growth.

“It mirrors the ethos of the Kiwi Space Activator programme in accelerating local capability and enabling more New Zealand space technology to get into space.”

Smaller than a can of Coke, the payload captures imagery across the 22 million square kilometres of New Zealand maritime territory.

Six payloads are hitching a ride on TPA-2.

Lune-digital: Modular maritime domain awareness payload, Stephen Fellner, Paul Mallinson.

New Zealand oversees one of the world's largest areas of ocean, roughly 20 times our landmass. A major challenge is effective monitoring for fisheries, environmental health and other needs. Lune Digital's miniature maritime payload adds a space-based sensing layer to help agenies understand activity across this expanse of ocean.

Smaller than a can of Coke, the payload captures ocean imagery, with onboard AI flagging areas of interest and sending the data to ground control. Processing imagery in orbit is fast, efficient and suited to small satellites. Designed to be modular, it can fly on future space missions without a dedicated spacecraft. Reaching orbit is a key step for the Auckland-based team's ambition to build a world-class optical sensing capability for New Zealand.

One foot in the clouds, Education payload, John Smith, teacher

This mission will launch a payload dedicated to student-led scientific discovery. Its goal is to inspire young people to see space as a pathway for learning and to empower them to investigate issues that matter to their generation.

Students will help shape the science focus of the mission, design investigations and contribute to real world research outcomes. The project aims to involve 25 schools and 250-500 students nationwide, supported by educators, scientists and industry partners.

John Smith, a physics teacher at Rosmini College, Auckland, says, "New Zealand is an extraordinary country for students with an interest in science and particularly space.

"We have ready access to role models, technology, and a highly supportive areospace community. This means we perhaps live in the best place for our students to learn skills and work in this field."

"An opportunity to take a design through from an initial concept all the way through to becoming real flight hardware is a huge learning experience."

Te Pūnaha Ātea – Auckland Space Institute - University of Auckland, Dragsail hold down and release mechanism, Marcus Bycroft, Liam Knight

 The dragsail Hold‑Down and Release Mechanism (HDRM) is a student‑designed system that restrains TPA‑2’s dragsail until deployment, using a Shape Memory Alloy actuator to release the sail when commanded. Once deployed, the dragsail increases atmospheric drag and helps the satellite deorbit more quickly.

The project explores how mechanisms — which rely on controlled elastic strain rather than complex moving parts — can be used reliably in aerospace environments. The goal is a simpler, lower‑cost release mechanism that can be reset more easily than existing solutions.

“An opportunity to take a design through from an initial concept all the way through to becoming real flight hardware is a huge learning experience. Designing something that works on paper is vastly different than designing something that works reliably in a real space environment and integrates with the other components of the satellite,” says Knight. “Being able to contribute to a space mission at student level is rare, so this is an exciting chance to validate that the mechanism performs as intended.”

"Travel to space is beyond most of us. Putting our own experiments in space represents an exciting and unique scientific opportunity."

University of Auckland, School of Biological Sciences, BioOrbix, led by Anthony Phillips

BioOrbix is the first iteration of a flexible, remotely operated biological mini-laboratory designed to give New Zealand researchers practical access to CubeSat microgravity science.

Inside the payload, three small experiments will test whether plant material metabolism can be measured in microgravity, record how biomedical-like fluids behave without gravity, and monitor how the cell skeleton changes shape in space.

These studies will help validate some of the technologies on board to become proven platforms for New Zealand CubeSat biological and biomedical research.

"Travel to space is beyond most of us. However, putting our own experiments in space represents an exciting and unique scientific opportunity to be involved in doing some real "off-world" research for the first time," says Phillips.

The system works like a barcode for satellites: tiny laser pulses encode a unique ID that can be read from the ground using a single-photo detector.

University of Auckland, Department of Physics - Optical Comms beacon, Joseph Ashby, Nicholas Rattenbury

The optical comms beacon will validate the team’s work on the Extremely Low Resource Optical Identifier (ELROI) system and trial new onboard computer architecture built around multiple low-cost processors.

The payload uses a novel software approach to continually select the healthiest processor to transmit the ELROI signal, extending system lifetime without heavy radiation shielding. ELROI works like a barcode for satellites: tiny laser pulses encode a unique ID that can be read from the ground using a single-photo detector.

Te Punaha Atea – Auckland Space Institute – Payload interface module & highly-integrated avionics, Kala Payinda, Louis Young, Shivam Desai

 The Space Institute is developing a fully in‑house avionics package for future TPA missions, replacing the third‑party systems currently used. The goal is a self-reliant, scalable and low‑cost architecture that covers onboard computing, data handling, power, communications and payload interfacing — all designed and manufactured at the University. On TPA‑2, the new Highly Integrated Avionics (HIA) system will fly alongside the existing commercial stack to test its performance in orbit.

A key part of the project is the Payload Interface Module (PIM), a universal adapter that allows any payload to plug into a CubeSat without custom electronics. Different payloads often require different voltages, data buses and control signals; the PIM turns that complexity into a software configuration step rather than a hardware redesign. In future, the team aims to condense the entire avionics architecture onto a flat circuit board mounted on the CubeSat wall, freeing much needed space for payloads.

For the students involved, the project has been a rare chance to design flight hardware that will run in space. It has offered hands‑on experience across the full lifecycle of a CubeSat mission — from electronics design to system integration. It is a major step towards more New Zealand science missions able to fly on locally-built spacecraft.