Dr Gabrielle M Caswell of SpacePort Australia Pty Ltd, has been named a finalist in seven out of 30 Australian Space Awards, 2026. Dr Caswell has confirmed her acceptance of the award nominations, she was a finalist in the 2025 (5) and 2024 (3)awards. Dr Caswell says, “It’s an exciting time to be working in space, we are watching the renaissance of human space flight, beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO), and a return to the Moon.” She continued, “It’s particularly exciting as Artemis II had a smooth launch, and all hands returned to Earth.”

Dr Caswell added, “We should remember the pictures of the first landing on the Moon, Apollo 11, Artemis’ brother ship, were directly beamed from Antenna One, Moree OTC, to the world. The Moree OTC station is now decommissioned, the site is 20 minutes from SpacePort Australia. The Honeysuckle Creek Achieves has a wonderful repository of Australia’s long history, of supporting space exploration. It has a great store of images, which are really worth reviewing”.

Dr Caswell has spent a large part of her working life in rural and remote environments; she has unique operational insight into the challenges of providing medical care for remote locations, a distinct advantage when understanding the operational space environment. Dr Caswell continues to work in the practices she established over 20 years ago, in rural NSW.

SpacePort Austrlaia has a unique niche in the modern space industry, blending engineering with biological and ecological systems management. She continued, “Important concepts for exploration class deep space missions, and remote space colonies, are, by virtue of location, have finite resources. Technology needs to be robust, fixable and serve very precise purposes. The extraterrestrial environment is unique in its overriding hostility towards the human life form.”

Dr Caswell’s enthusiasm for science, in all its forms, blends into the requirements for novel problem solving, multi- and inter-disciplinary teams, with cross collaboration. With an eye on the next generation of space personal and problem solvers, Dr Caswell has formed several space education and training partnerships, including The Montana Spaceport and Test Range and Arkisys, international STEM educators ChameleCo and STEM

Innovation Council. These strategically focused education and space training bodies are working to prepare and train individuals for space careers. SpacePort Australia is working with Arkisys®, to repurpose the International Space Station (ISS) Astrobee’s from maintenance robots to medical assistants. In Australia, SpacePort Australia is working with One Giant Leap Australia, to create the SPACE SCIENCE SCHOOL.

In the USA states Dr Caswell is creating a number of academic to space orientated manufacturing hubs, capitalizing on the concept of spaceport economic zones. Dr Caswell has recently returned this concept to Australia, backed by the ongoing development of SpacePort Australia and its international academic and commercial partnerships.

Dr Caswell stated she is privileged to have these associations, and excited to be mapping out academic and operational training pathways, coupled with excellent youth engagement strategies. “The STEM opportunities are enormous in the space industry, as I remind people what we have down here, they will want up there. And the challenge of keeping humans alive in space is just starting; deep space is a very different environment from LEO,” continuing, she said, “Something which I had never considered, and a wonderful outcome of my ‘folly’, my retirement project [sic. SpacePort Australia], is that SpacePort Australia is a project which in the past year, has become an inter-generational project. The pathway not to just for myself, but one which will hopefully engage generations to come.”

Dr Caswell said, “Academic science and applied space science will become a continuum. Pathways and opportunities are being created at lightning speed. It’s a wonderful time to be alive. Imagination has returned to science. Curiosity, left field ideas and novel solutions are back in vogue; and these will be ideas will lead to the scientific and space science careers of tomorrow”. She reflected. “My view has always been that elder states-people have a responsibility to push forward Australian youth, young people, to place a few bricks on pathway for them [young scientists] to take their first steps. And it is evident now, we are on mission” and the Moon settlement is the mission”.

As part of the awards ceremony each finalist is asked to nominate three songs. Dr Caswell nominated Russell Morris: The Real Thing and On The Wings Of An Eagle, and her third U2, I Still Haven’t Found What I Am Looking For. Dr Caswell stated she was very grateful to her anonymous nominators. And it was fabulous to see so many young women in the finalist line up, and she is very excited for three of her mentorees, who have made it to silver badge [finalist] status.

The Award ceremony will be held in Sydney, Thursday June 18th, 2026. Dr Caswell is presenting at the SpaceCyt Institute, Australia Space Law and Policy Conference on Friday 19th of June.