No need to look to the skies for your cosmic fix; space is currently dominating our small screens.

Away, an overwrought family drama about a space shuttle commander (Hilary Swank) torn between her frontier obligations on Mars and her role as a mother back home, is currently the top trending series on Netflix, with "2.3 times the demand of the average TV series in Australia over the past 30 days", according to streaming data specialists Parrot Analytics.

Elsewhere, Ridley Scott's post-apocalyptic Raised By Wolves (HBO), and the alternate-history NASA drama For All Mankind (Apple TV) are exploring two different angles of our space-faring ambitions, while a remake of The Right Stuff, the 1983 film about aspiring astronaut recruits, is due to launch on Disney+ next month.

The genre's current resonance is understandable, says Amy Wardrop, a reporter at local space industry news site Space Australia, as ecological anxiety has forced us to ponder our post-Earth possibilities while, at the same time, once-wild technological ambitions appear achievable.