At just 23, Solange Cunin is making space history. She is the driving force behind Australia's first payload to the International Space Station. And the aerospace engineering student is making her mark with the help of hundreds of NSW high school students.

"We had to get special approval from 16 other nations who take part in the ISS because Australia has never been involved with it before," said Ms Cunin, a student at the University of NSW.

Science and Industry Minister Christopher Pyne this month signed the first "Overseas Launch Certificate" ever issued by the Australian government.

Ms Cunin has enlisted the bright ideas of students from 40 NSW high schools to prepare a piece of hardware that will run 60 experiments in space. All of the experiments are written in Python computer code and loaded up into a piece of kit that will be tested by NASA scientists before rocketing up into Earth orbit.