Brooke Mills

Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Brooke brings strategic, scientific, and operational depth to Astraea, with experience spanning advanced research environments, project delivery, and emerging technology ecosystems.

She has worked on strategic initiatives within the University of Sydney’s Nanoscience Hub, supporting executive leadership while delivering complex projects across multidisciplinary teams. With formal training in project management and leadership, Brooke combines structured delivery with strong stakeholder engagement and strategy implementation.

Her work is complemented by active involvement in the Australian and global STEM ecosystem, including speaking and panel participation, mentoring in programs such as the NASA International Space Apps Challenge, and contributing to space-focused initiatives like the Milo Mission Academy, where she led project delivery.

Driven by a clear focus on space medicine and critical technologies, Brooke ensures Astraea’s work remains grounded in real-world application, coordinated execution, and meaningful impact across science, healthcare, and space.

Q&A with brooke

Astraea became real for me the moment I realised there was a fundamental assumption underpinning human spaceflight that simply wasn’t true: that the medicines and materials we rely on to keep people alive had been properly validated for space. When I dug into it, I found that most testing stops at terrestrial standards or low Earth orbit simulations, which don’t reflect the radiation environments we’re actually moving into. That gap wasn’t just technical; it was ethical. We’re sending humans further into space without fully understanding how their most critical systems will perform. That’s when Astraea shifted from an idea to a responsibility. It mattered because it wasn’t about innovation for the sake of it, it was about safety, trust, and enabling the next phase of human exploration with integrity.
My path hasn’t been linear, but that’s exactly what makes it valuable. I’ve built my career in complex, high-stakes environments, working across research, strategy, and operations, where translating big ideas into executable plans is critical. I’ve had a wealth of experience working at the intersection of emerging technologies, governance, and stakeholder alignment, which mirrors exactly what Astraea requires. I’ve also had to lead through ambiguity, manage competing priorities, and build structure where none existed. Personally, my drive comes from a deep need to create safe, functional systems for people, especially in environments where failure isn’t an option. Astraea sits right at that intersection of technical ambition and human responsibility, and that’s where I do my best work.
What excites me most is the shift from adapting Earth-based systems to intentionally designing for extreme environments from the outset. Historically, we’ve tried to retrofit solutions, whether in space, deep sea, or disaster zones, but that approach doesn’t scale as we push further out. Designing for extremes demands precision, resilience, and systems thinking that ultimately improve outcomes everywhere. It matters now because we’re at an inflection point, Artemis, commercial space stations, deep space missions, they’re all moving from concept to reality. If we don’t solve these challenges now, we risk building infrastructure on unstable foundations. Getting it right at this stage sets the standard for the next generation of human exploration and survival.
My favourite capability of HIRO-LAB is its ability to move beyond static pass/fail testing into a dynamic, real-time understanding of how materials and pharmaceuticals actually degrade under radiation. Drift degradation profiling is powerful because it captures how performance changes over time, not just whether something fails, but how and when it begins to deviate from its intended function. That’s critical in space, where you don’t get the luxury of redundancy or immediate replacement. Right now, as we move toward longer-duration missions and autonomous healthcare, understanding those degradation pathways isn’t optional; it’s foundational. Drift gives us predictive insight, not just retrospective data, and that fundamentally changes how we design, validate, and trust human-critical systems.
In 10 years, success for Astraea looks like being the global standard for validating human-critical technologies in extreme environments. Our data underpins how pharmaceuticals are approved for space, how materials are certified for radiation exposure, and how missions are designed with human safety at the centre. We’re not just a testing company; we’re part of the infrastructure that makes long-duration human presence beyond Earth viable. Personally, my role was to build the foundation, structure the company, secure the right partnerships, and translate a complex vision into something executable and investable. I helped create the systems, governance, and strategy that enabled the team's technical brilliance to scale into real-world impact.

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Sydney, Australia

info@astraea.tech