With last year's establishment of the Australian Space Agency (ASA), now headquartered in Adelaide, the Australian Government signaled a new push for a bigger slice of the global space economy, estimated to be worth $345 billion.
A number of developments announced in March highlight the increasing momentum in Australian space-related activities.
They include two ASA investments totalling $12 million, which form part of the Adelaide City Deal, a 10-year agreement between federal, state and local governments.
ASA will provide $6 million for a Mission Control Centre at Adelaide’s new innovation precinct Lot Fourteen, which is now also home to the space agency. The centre will support Australian space missions with a range of facilities that will be accessible to space start-ups, SMEs and researchers.
An additional $6 million will be provided for a new Space Discovery Centre that will be tasked to inspire, educate and train young Australians.
The government’s decision to locate ASA in South Australia is a huge boost to the state's already significant space capabilities. But support for Australia’s space sector is also gaining momentum in other parts of the country.
The University of Southern Queensland launched its new Institute for Advanced Engineering and Space Sciences in Toowoomba and Mount Kent Observatory. It will focus on hypersonic propulsion systems, advanced materials and astrophysics. According to Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, Karen Andrews, this will complement ASA’s efforts to triple the size of the sector to $12 billion a year by 2030.
ASA has also entered agreements with the ACT and NSW governments on key industry and infrastructure opportunities related to space.
In addition to the Memorandum of Understanding with the NSW government, ASA will also invest $2 million in the development of new space manufacturing capability at the Western Sydney Aerotropolis, which is to become a central hub for new space start-ups, SMEs and researchers to collaborate.
ASA has also signed a Statement of Strategic Intend with resources company Woodside Energy. The statement identifies areas of potential research, development and commercial outcomes, and is based on Woodside developing new capabilities in remote operations and technologies.
According to ASA chief executive officer Dr Megan Clark, technologies developed for the remote management and maintenance, which include robotics, automation and artificial intelligence, will also be critical for near space and other space exploration initiatives. ASA has previously reached similar agreements with Airbus, Nova Systems, Sitael, Goonhilly, Earth Stations and Lockheed Martin.
Other recent developments related to space include four new space technology projects as part of a $35 million over five-years agreement between the CSIRO and Boeing to jointly develop space-related technologies.
It builds on a partnership between the two organisations that started 30 years ago in 1989.
Also in March, Geoscience Australia and not-for-profit FrontierSI released a new strategy paper that aims to help industry to use satellite data through the Digital Earth Australia (DEA) program. DEA receives ongoing funding from the Australian Government of $13 million each year to increase the utilisation of earth observation data across Australia.
The global geospatial services sector is estimated to generate US$ 400 billion in revenue per year, according to the strategy paper. Domestically, Australian earth observation activities provided $500 million of direct economic benefits to the Australian economy in 2015, and according to the strategy paper this is set to triple to more than $1.7 billion by 2025.
Opportunities associated with space related technologies also arise across the farming sector. Over the past 18 months, Geoscience Australia has trialled its Satellite-Based Augmentation System (SBAS), the development of which was supported with $160.9 million in the 2018-19 federal budget.
The SBAS is to deliver satellite positioning capabilities across all of Australia with decimeter accuracy.
And this, as the trial revealed, could for example be used by farmers to precisely guide farm machinery for seeding, fertilising and crop spraying with minimal overlap.
According to a government statement, the system increased the accuracy of poisitioning the farm equipment from 5 metres down to 10 centimetres, and used in controlled-traffic farming could thus increase crop production and reduce costs.