Launching archaeology into space and what it tells us about life on earth

Space archaeology emerged as a subdiscipline around the year 2000, with a very Australian complexion. Professor John Campbell was a pioneer in this area, taking a broad cosmic view incorporating archaeoastronomy and SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence; Campbell Citation2005). Dirk Spennemann (Citation2004) considered the ethics of treading on Neil Armstrong’s footprints, and with Guy Murphy, studied the taphonomy of Martian crash sites (Spennemann and Murphy Citation2009). My starting point was space junk in Earth orbit, and the intersection of Indigenous heritage and space technology at places like the Woomera Rocket Range in South Australia.