Research Facilities

The Advanced Composite Research Unit (ACRU) Composites Laboratory houses a reusable vacuum bagging system, including Heatcon composite bonders for thermosetting resin curing.

The radioisotope implanter is used for the low energy (50 - 150 kV) ion implantation of radioisotopes as negative ions.

The centrepiece of UNSW Canberra Space is Australia’s first space mission concurrent engineering design facility.

The Special Collections at UNSW Canberra houses 13,500 rare books and 350+ manuscript collections as well as theses, videos, maps, Commonwealth records, photographs, slides, and negatives. We provide both physical and digital access,

During 2020, the need to reach students normally studying face to face courses on wireless security was prioritised and a strategy enacted to allow UNSW Canberra to create our VPN Wireless Range.

The SCADA table otherwise known as 'Tiny Town', is a miniature scale critical infrastructure town, using real critical infrastructure hardware and software to control low voltage systems.

The Advanced Composite Research Unit (ACRU) Composites Laboratory houses an American Autoclave, which is used for manufacturing of high-quality polymer matrix composite components.

The Structural Testing Laboratory (soils, concrete and steel) houses a wide variety of testing facilities.

A shielded radiochemistry laboratory is available for the safe storage of radioactive samples, and the preparation of wet and open radioactive sources. It features several flow cabinets and detectors for activity evaluation.

The Supersonic Wind Tunnel and Shock Tube Laboratory houses a Mach 2 to 3 blowdown supersonic tunnel and two shock tube facilities for steady and non-steady high-speed flow experiments. All three facilities are used for the investigation of steady and non-steady high-speed flows.

The Innovation Lab seeks to apply creativity, high performance computing and advanced machine learning to a range of emerging challenges in cybersecurity, space, signals processing, and modelling.

The Advanced Composite Research Unit (ACRU) Composites Laboratory houses a hot press, which is used for manufacturing of thermoplastic composite parts and specimens.

Our thermal vacuum chamber laboratory replicates space environments and is used to test how objects and materials will behave in those conditions. It features two chambers and solar simulation capability.

We have a suite of electron spin resonance (ESR) spectrometers employed for conventional, pulsed and electronically-detected ESR. 

We play a vital role in the US Air Force Academy’s world-wide Falcon Telescope Network, housing one of the 12 telescopes. Working in collaboration with institutions from across the globe, the University provides the infrastructure needed to support the Canberra node. 

The Aviation Safety Studio is a space dedicated to flight simulation for teaching concepts such as aviation safety, aircraft performance, aircraft design, and flight stability and control.

The Digital Forensics Lab is a dynamically configurable space which can be used to simulate and conduct different digital forensic investigation scenarios.  

UNSW Canberra Space is equipped with two satellite ground stations that enable us to communicate with our spacecraft. One is located on campus, while a larger industrial-grade satellite is positioned just outside the ACT border in Yass, hosted by our ground station partner Cingulan Space.

The T-ADFA facility is an Australian-developed experimental device capable of generating flows with the speed of up to 12 times the speed of sound at temperatures that can simulate Earth entry conditions and hypersonic air-breathing flight. This facility also has developed state-of-the-art laser-

A tiny speck of dust has the potential to cause major issues for spacecraft. Our Class 10,000 cleanroom provides a pristine environment for the development, integration and build of our satellites and various subsystems.

A suite of spectrometers is routinely employed for 57Fe- and 169Tm-Mössbauer spectroscopy measurements at room temperature and over the temperature range, 4.2 - 300 K, with a high-temperature furnace (300- 720 K) for 57Fe.

The Academy Library houses exceptional print and electronic scholarly resources that support teaching, learning and research at UNSW Canberra.

The Indoor Robotics Flight Test Facility is a large netted area (10m x 10m x 4m) used for testing robots indoors. The laboratory is equipped with a 20 camera motion capture system that tracks the position and orientation of multiple robots at speeds up to 200 times per second.

The Two-Stage Light Gas Gun is one of the University's flagship pieces of equipment. It is versatile, boasting three different firing configurations to suit the needs of most high-velocity impact experiment.

Our PC laboratory areas have 105 seats in the new facility and 140 overall when you include older lab spaces. Our server hosts over 2,000 virtual machines, 360 threads, 6TB RAM and 140TB all SSD storage across an 8-node hyper-converged private cloud.