Australian Space Research Articles

“Consider Carefully the Best Use of Our Limited Resources”: Australian Space Policy, 1960–72

In Australia's long engagement with space activities, the 1960s are singled out as a particular period of technological achievement. In turn, these achievements are often described as having been a potential foundation for an expanded Australian space programme that was rejected by the Australian government. However, these arguments, which might be termed a narrative of “missed opportunity” in writing about Australia's space past, are rarely made with reference to the archival record. This article argues that analysis of key decisions around space during the 1960s show that rather than being dismissive of space technology, the Australian government was cognisant of the potential benefits of space. It was supportive of Australian involvement when it met with broader national needs and willing to expend significant government resources in investigating and supporting space endeavours. Equally, it declined to expand Australia's expenditure on space when, like any other policy area, the proposals did not meet Australian needs, were poorly designed, or both.

Multidisciplinary design and optimization of intelligent Distributed Satellite Systems for EARTH observation

Recent advances in small, connected and intelligent satellite systems have created a wide range of opportunities for the adoption of intelligent Distributed Satellite Systems (iDSS) in communication, navigation and Earth Observation (EO) missions. iDSS are goal-oriented systems comprising of multiple satellites or modules that interact, communicate and/or cooperate with each other to accomplish the desired mission goals. The ability to mass-produce low-cost small satellites and contemporary developments in avionics/astrionics technology have spurred interest in iDSS, especially for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellations and regional clusters. The SmartSat Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) and Australian space roadmap, as well as the landmark National Space Programme strategy and priorities, encompass EO. To date, insufficient progress and no conclusive outcome was made in terms of how contemporary Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO) models and tools can be best tailored to the new capabilities and specificities of iDSS. The MDO of iDSS is challenging because it introduces new variables and highly non-linear interactions. In this context, we propose an MDO methodology to optimize an iDSS for persistent coverage over the entire Australian landmass. Several aspects of the iDSS are considered in this work, including the constellation model, subsystem models and the coupling interactions between different satellite subsystems and constellation design parameters. The constellation configuration, as well as the subsystems, are modelled using OpenMDAO, which is used to analyze and visualize the planned iDSS EO mission. The iDSS is then optimized using the Multidisciplinary Feasible (MDF) architecture approach and the iDSS interdependencies are numerically treated using the Nonlinear Block Gauss-Seidel (NLBGS) iterative solver. The resulting N2 diagrams are presented and the proposed solution is both spatially and temporally optimized, demonstrating that the proposed iDSS will enable near real-time persistent coverage over the entire Australian continent.

China’s Space Policy: An Australian Perspective

China’s rapid rise in strategic power extends into the domain of space. That space exploration is bound to continue, but for Beijing, space is ever more important for defence and for growing comprehensive national power to challenge US leadership. China aims to become the dominant space actor by 2049, a status which will encompass both military capability in space, as well as “presence” on key astrostrategic locations within the Earth-Moon system. For the United States, this challenge, although not—yet—a “space race” in the context of Apollo and the US–Soviet space race of the 1960s, looms large and may become significant as China builds astrostrategic power. For Australia, China’s growing capabilities in space, particularly its military space capabilities, are driving new policy development in relation to Australian space capability.

Space Weather: A Potential Threat?

Space systems are undoubtedly woven into the fabric of our daily lives. Their role in ensuring global connectivity, navigation, weather forecasting, disaster management, and national security is crucial (Pellegrino & Stang, 2016). As the 21st century unfolds, this dependence is only projected to deepen. By 2050, Australia's sovereign space capabilities are anticipated to experience significant growth (Australian Space Agency [ASA], 2019). Nonetheless, our growing reliance on these systems exposes us to potential threats from space, especially space weather.

Is Australia Really Lost in Space?

Australia is one of the world's most wealthy nations. Yet to the surprise and puzzlement of many observers, Australian governments over many years steadfastly refused to become involved in space activities in ways judged to be commensurate to the nation's wealth and place in the world. Repeated calls to establish a space agency were ignored or firmly rejected and civil and commercial investment in space activities was limited. In the past decade, there have been substantial developments and new investments in the policy, national security, civil and commercial domains. Perhaps the salient feature is the establishment of the Australian Space Agency in 2018. This article is a description and critical analysis of these developments. There are two key drivers to Australia's approach to space. The first is Australia's strategic geography, its location on Earth, its large size and small population most of whom live in a few large coastal cities. The second is national security, typically expressed though the nation's alliance relationships. These have been policy constants since the late 1940s and remain so today. This article demonstrates that recent developments, including the establishment of the space agency, are best understood as opportunistic outcomes and serendipitous results of a series of events several of which had little to do with space per se. Heralded by some as a new beginning, a closer analysis confirms the continuing importance of geography and national security as the two key drivers of Australia's approach to space.

Australia’s signing of the Artemis Accords: a positive development or a controversial choice?

ABSTRACT On 15 October 2020, Australia signed the US Artemis Accords. Such a move was heralded as an important step towards promoting the Australian space program and enabling the country to take part in an ambitious space exploration venture. While not denying the importance of such a move, the present commentary analyzes it in a critical manner by assessing its legal and diplomatic implications. Taking into account Australia’s prior membership of the 1979 Moon Agreement and the discrepancies that exists between the Agreement’s provisions and those of the Artemis Accords, the present commentary not only views Australia’s simultaneous membership of both instruments as problematic but also considers it not sustainable in the long term. Based on these considerations, this commentary recommends Australia to either reconsider its membership to the Moon Agreement or, at least, to clarify how the two instruments may co-exists from a legal and political perspective.

Preliminary structural design for extraterrestrial buildings

The adventurous human nature had recently expanded to extraterrestrial habitation. Public billion-dollar companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin are investing extra ordinary capitals in space exploration. Australian Space Agency had also joined the space competition in 2018 in a so-called Mars mission. Although might sound far reaching, the idea of building human habitats on Mars requires well evaluated engineering design in the first stage as the cost of transporting equipment and materials as light as a kilogram to another planet is a massive financial burden. Throughout this passage, the effect of gravity, atmospheric pressure, and radiation on extra terrestrial buildings will be discussed. Following that a cylindrical structure as the most stable type of shell against internal pressure will be analyzed.

The Australian Space Agency

The Australian Space Agency

Advancing technology in oil and gas: collaboration and comparison with the space sector

Woodside led the development of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry in Australia, operating 6% of global supply in 2019. From the first LNG plant in the southern hemisphere, to the largest ‘not-normally crewed’ offshore platform, innovation is part of Woodside’s DNA. Woodside was the first Australian oil and gas company to start working with global space agencies on remote operations challenges. Through exchanging people, knowledge, experiences and ideas, the collective impact of individual responses to these challenges is enhanced. From a direct, collaborative partnership with the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Australian Space Agency, to cross-sector collaborations such as the Australian Remote Operations for Space and Earth, the company’s approach to innovation is to adopt an open way of problem solving that does not presume that all the answers are in one place, nor that all solutions have only one application. This paper reviews experiences in collaborative partnerships within and beyond the space sector, documenting insights into the key ingredients for impactful collaboration.

Overseas tourists negotiating risk at Australian beaches

Beachgoing experiences are highly desirable among international tourists visiting Australia. Beach use has been popularised in the contemporary Australian imaginary influencing how locals behave at the beach and setting an example to visitors. Many of the behaviours that Australian beach users’ display can be classed as risky. How and why tourists enact certain risky behaviours in their attempts to comply with beach going norms in Australia is not well known. The imagined beachgoing psyche of tourists describes a disconnection between pre-conceptions about risk at the beach and the reality of actual risks and hazards. The pursuit of thrill and risk while on holiday work to reconcile tourist attitudes about their often safety-averse behaviours, helping to explain why beach safety is often ignored, accidentally and purposefully. The influence of other social phenomena, such as the amplification of risk, interactive risk and group norms, contribute to tourists’ beach behaviours in Australia. Beachgoer questionnaires and interview testimonies triangulated results using a mixed-method-research approach that identifies the mechanisms that lead to an incoherence between understandings of danger and safe behaviours, which were specific to the socio-spatial context of the Australian beach space. There is much ambiguity in the nature of the Australian beach holiday, where the tourist beachgoer can choose between behaviours of escape (to relax) and excite (to take risks). This can lead to the conflation of these contrasting, yet spatially connected, pursuits.

Cooperation in space: An international comparison for the benefit of emerging space agencies

This paper provides a comparison of models for international cooperation by space states. By analysing the successes and failures of these models, recommendations about international cooperation have been presented for the benefit of emerging space agencies, for example, the Australian Space Agency. As international cooperation in space is very wide-ranging in nature, this paper also researches and analyses a number of specific topics intended to provide valuable insights for emerging space agencies. The paper draws upon the learnings of emerging space nations and established space actors. Reasons for international cooperation are examined, along with the legal frameworks used to support it. Examples of international cooperation in space projects are reviewed along with international committees promoting cooperation. The use of international cooperation in helping solve a major ‘space challenge’ facing the world is examined and a framework for evaluating potential cooperative initiatives is proposed. This report emerged from the research conducted in Space Ready: The Launchpad For Emerging Agencies which provided policy recommendations for new space states from a comparative analysis of the aims, structure, funding, and activities over 14 different space agencies. The report was written during the 2018 International Space University's Southern Hemisphere Space Studies Program, in which students from 15 countries with diverse academic backgrounds were able to provide insider perspectives on the space agency of their countries.

Whistling the Death March? Listening in to the Acoustics of Ludwig Leichhardt's Australian Exploration

Scholars considering the acoustics of exploration have focused on how explorers heard Australian space in terms of silence, to argue this silenced Indigenous presence, or that stillness, was incongruous with how a place to be colonised should sound. I focus on the acoustically attuned Ludwig Leichhardt, a science-poet indebted to the Enlightenment, but also engaged with the German Romantic legacy. The manifold acoustic dimensions of expeditioning – including music – were important to him in different ways. The acoustic world could be assayed and harnessed in ways that were often consistent with colonialism. But there was also something fugitive about acoustics. They could mark a site for emotional engagement with place, and sometimes embryonic cross-cultural dialogue. Yet the possibilities were not always heard and, in line with Romanticism, the acoustic could drag down expeditioners’ spirits just as it could buoy them up. It could baffle or be a site for Indigenous resistance.

Australian Space Agency launches

Australian Space Agency launches

We have lift off ! Why Australia needs the new Space Agency

Last September was an exciting month for space activities in Adelaide. Not only was the city graced with a visit from space-entrepreneur Elon Musk, who declared SpaceX’s intention to become a very fast terrestrial airline (using very big rockets) but the Australian government also announced the creation of an Australian Space Agency. This announcement has been met with great enthusiasm by those already working in the Australian space industry. So popular was the idea in fact that the government made the announcement well before the Report of the Expert Reference Group was completed. The Expert Group, in its Review of Australia’s Space Industry Capability, identified early in its national consultations that there was a strong consensus across the nation that an Australian space agency was needed to lift national and international engagement; set national policy and strategy to realise Australia’s ambitions in the civil space sector; facilitate growth in the space industry sector; and inspire the nation with Australia’s contribution to human endeavours in space.

The development of the Australian Space Forecast Centre (ASFC)

Abstract. The Ionospheric Prediction Service (IPS) was formed in 1947 to provide monthly prediction services for high frequency (HF) radio, in particular to support HF communications with the United Kingdom. It was quickly recognized that to be effective such a service also had to provide advice when ionospheric storms prevented HF communications from taking place. With the advent of the International Geophysical Year (IGY), short-term forecasts were also required for research programmes and the task of supplying the Australian input to these was given to Frank Cook, of the IPS, while Jack Turner, also of the IPS, supervised the generation of ionospheric maps to support high latitude HF communications. These two important IGY activities formed the platform on which all future IPS services would be built. This paper reviews the development of the Australian Space Forecast Centre (ASFC), which arose from these early origins.

Remapping Australia: Murray Bail’s New Topographies of the Self in the Notebooks

The Australian writer Murray Bail’s Notebooks feature a change of stance that interrogates the self-place relationship: initially dominated by an ideal of placelessness, they then seek to forge new bonds with a reimagined homeland. This essay examines the political implications of this paradigmatic shift. Arguably, the sense of identity that finds expression in this unconventional autobiography depends, in part, on a radical reconceptualisation of the Australian space.

Ukraine-Australia: Cooperation Based on Values

The article focuses on areas of Australian-Ukrainian cooperation. The author draws attention to Australia’s support for the territorial integrity of Ukraine as well as continuation of the sanctions regime against the Russian Federation. Australia has completely abandoned its activities on the Crimean peninsula, supported all the Ukrainian international initiatives on human rights protection in Crimea. As for the Donbas, Australia officially recognizes the conflict as a foreign invasion, not a civil war. The article deals with important areas of bilateral relations: restoration of the Australian-Ukrainian parliamentary friendship group in the Australian Parliament; the first-ever visit of the President of the Australian Senate to Ukraine; efforts to upgrade the level of Australian diplomatic representation in Ukraine; opening of the Honorary Consulate of Ukraine in Sydney; cooperation on the MH17 plane crash investigation, both bilateral and international; statement of the Australian Senate on the occasion of the 85th anniversary of the 1932-1933 Holodomor in Ukraine; finally, further expansion of areas of collaboration. Economic cooperation is being developed in the nuclear energy sphere. The establishment of the Australian Space Agency, development of energy cooperation as well as synergy in the Antarctic open new opportunities for Ukraine. The role of the Ukrainian diaspora in promoting the interests of Ukraine in Australia deserves particular attention. The author argues that despite geographical remoteness, Ukraine and Australia do share common values. In days of great global turmoil, this fact acquires particular significance. Keywords: Australia, Ukraine, international cooperation, Australia-Ukraine Parliamentary Friendship Group, Senate, international organizations, bilateral relations.

Histogram-based ionogram displays and their application to autoscaling

A simple method is described for displaying and auto scaling the basic ionogram parameters foF2 and h’F2 as well as some additional layer parameters from digital ionograms. The technique employed is based on forming frequency and height histograms in each ionogram. This technique has now been applied specifically to ionograms produced by the IPS5D ionosonde developed and operated by the Australian Space Weather Service (SWS). The SWS ionograms are archived in a cleaned format and readily available from the SWS internet site. However, the method is applicable to any ionosonde which produces ionograms in a digital format at a useful signal-to-noise level. The most novel feature of the technique for autoscaling is its simplicity and the avoidance of the mathematical imaging and line fitting techniques often used. The program arose from the necessity to display many days of ionogram output to allow the location of specific types of ionospheric event such as ionospheric storms, travelling ionospheric disturbances and repetitive ionospheric height changes for further investigation and measurement. Examples and applications of the method are given including the removal of sporadic E and spread F.

The redefined role of finance in Australian agriculture

ABSTRACTIn their highly influential teaching and research text Global Restructuring: The Australian Experience Fagan and Webber set out a substantivist, institutionalist and multi-scalar account of the Australian space economy’s relatively rapid and radical globalisation after 1980. This paper extends Fagan and Webber’s global restructuring thesis to Australian farming and agriculture, connecting historical and more recent scholarship on agriculture–finance relations. We highlight two areas where finance has fundamentally reshaped the agricultural sector. First, we argue that financial restructuring has shifted the relationship between farmers and lenders. Second, we suggest that under the logics of finance, Australian land and water are emerging as ‘alternative’ financial asset classes. The paper demonstrates that Australian agriculture has become subject to a comprehensive process of finance-driven economic restructuring over recent decades. Regulatory changes since the 1980s have resulted in an agricultural sector where finance’s growing role is normalised as a part of the sector’s operation. Importantly, we stress the paramount role governments have played in redefining agri-finance relationships in Australia by promoting and providing the regulatory framework for processes of marketisation and assetisation, thereby making agriculture attractive to subsequent financial investments. Finance does not operate on its own but relies on the state’s crucial role in incentivising and setting the conditions for finance capital.

The Australian Indigenous sky dome and its potential to reshape interiority

Interiority is a concept that allows interior thinking to move beyond the interior space of the building envelope. It is also appropriate for engaging with built expressions across cultures, because interiority is not tied to western spatial organization. This paper will explore Australian Indigenous space and, in particular, the utopian cosmological model of the “sky dome” as providing an opportunity to extend the concept of interiority for the interior discipline. This paper builds on work undertaken as part of my doctoral research by positioning the sky dome in relation to three key aspects of interiority: scale, boundary, and projection. The sky dome was a cosmological model predominant, particularly in parts of south-east mainland Australia, at the time of European colonization. In this model the sky was thought of as a vault that stretched to the earth, sometimes supported on columns. This paper explores the ways this particular cosmological model can contribute to understandings of interiority. It concludes that the sky dome cosmology has the potential to act as a case study for the interior discipline when exploring the conceptualization of interiority. The cosmology also enables key ideas to be distilled in new ways. The argument draws on anthropological and historical literature but frames the discussion from within the interior architecture/interior design discipline.