From the moon to deep beyond: Australia’s future in space exploration

What Australia's fledgling space agency lacks in size it hopes to make up for with a smart operating strategy and a bold vision

On 20 July 1969, when Neil Armstrong first stepped onto the surface of the moon, the footage was relayed to 600 million viewers - about one-fifth of humanity in 1969 - from Nasa's Honeysuckle Creek tracking station on the outskirts of Canberra.

It was a big achievement for a small country with no space program of its own. Now, 50 years on, Australia has a fledgling space agency - a minnow compared with the US's Nasa, Europe's ESA and Japan's JAXA - but what it lacks in size it is hoping to make up for with a smart operating strategy and a bold vision of what it might be able to achieve.