The Australian Government has released the'Advancing Space' civil space strategy, a ten year plan that will support the National Space Agency (ASA) in its overarching objective: making Australia’s space industry competitive on a global stage.
“This Strategy provides the certainty of a long-term framework around which the sector can plan its activities towards the long term transformation and growth of the industry,” Dr Megan Clark, head of ASA, said in a statement.
ASA was established last year and, funded with a total of $47.7 million from the Australian Government to date, has the ambitious target of tripling the space sector’s contribution to GDP to $12 billion by 2030.
The strategy provides a plan to achieve this by focussing on key areas in which Australia either has competitive advantages or is presented with significant challenges. These areas are defined by seven National Civil Space Priorities, which will be targeted across different stages of the strategy.
The 2018-19 federal budget provided Geoscience Australia with $224.9 million to develop new technology that delivers reliable positioning data with an accuracy of 3 to 10 centimetres across Australia.
As part of this funding, $160.9 million were used for the satellite-based augmentation system (SBAS), which builds on positioning signals transmitted to Australia by GPS. As recently reported by the ARDR, Geoscience Australia is currently trialling the SBAS with Australian farmers who can use the technology to precisely guide their farm machinery in a controlled-traffic farming setting.
Geoscience Australia received a further $36.9 million for its Digital Earth Australia (DEA) project, which is targeting the Earth Observation priority, and provides free access to thirty years of satellite imagery of the Australian continent.
In the first two years, the plan will focus on the two priority areas Position, navigation and timing, and Earth observation. These have already received considerable support in the 2018-19 federal budget, with a total of $260 million provided to two projects run by Geoscience Australia (see box).
In the following years, the strategy will then focus on the remaining five Civil Space Priorities, which comprise:
Over the next three years, the strategy will be supported through a key initiative announced in the 2019-20 federal budget, the $19.5 million Space Infrastructure Fund, with investments to date including $2 million for the delivery of space manufacturing capability in New South Wales; and a $6 million for a Mission Control Centre in South Australia.