Rocket launch pads in Queensland and South Australia have been granted permits by the Australian Space Agency to fire up, with Gilmour Space hoping for lift off before Christmas. Meanwhile, the Southern Launch Whalers Way Orbital launch complex in South Australia has been granted final environmental approvals for work on permanent facilities ahead of plans… Read more »
A large communications satellite has broken up in orbit, affecting users in Europe, Central Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Australia, and adding to the growing swarm of space junk clouding our planet’s neighbourhood. The Intelsat 33e satellite provided broadband communication from a point some 35,000km above the Indian Ocean, in a geostationary orbit around… Read more »
Rocket developer and satellite launcher Gilmour Space Technologies will kick off a new suborbital flight test service in Australia next year for commercial and defence customers that require hypersonic speeds above Mach 5 (five times the speed of sound). The move comes amid frustrating delays in approval to launch the first Australian-made orbital rocket, developed… Read more »
Four space research projects at the University of South Australia (UniSA) have received $18 million in funding as part of the $230m iLAuNCH program. The funding coincides with the opening of a new Advanced Manufacturing Metal 3D printing facility at VPG Innovation, in Adelaide’s Camden Park. The 3D printing machines can produce titanium and nickel… Read more »
The global space economy is expected to be worth forecast to be worth $2.7 trillion with a decade, so the NSW government has decided to get in on the action with $500,000 in grant funding. The new NSW Space+ Program grants have been launched ahead of an estimated 10,000 delegates heading to Sydney in September… Read more »
An 11.5-metre-tall German-designed single stage rocket, took off from a South Australian launchpad into a suborbital test launch on Friday afternoon. The SR75 Hylmpulse rocket launched from the Koonibba Test Range near Ceduna on the Eyre Peninsula, at around 2.40pm, rising 50km above Earth before a parachute decent. The suborbital Koonibba Test Range is a… Read more »
Three space tech startups have received $18 million under the International Space Investment India Projects program, funded by the Australian government. Western Australia’s LatConnect60 received close to $5.8 million to develop and build a Low Earth Orbit satellite in Australia to collect information on carbon emissions at a very high resolution. The satellite will be… Read more »
The latest Centauri-6 satellite developed by Adelaide mining tech startup Fleet Space Technologies is now in orbit after heading skywards aboard SpaceX’s Bandwagon-1 “ridesharing” mission. The Falcon 9 reusable rocket’s payload of 11 satellites took off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida last week. The Centauri-6 microsatellite brings Fleet Space’s constellation of low earth… Read more »
Gold Coast rocket startup Gilmour Space has been granted approval to launch from its north Queensland facility. Federal regulators gave the company the green light under new laws introduced in 2018 to help develop Australia’s fledging space technology sector. Gilmour has developed its own hybrid rockets with a more environmentally friendly propellant and plans to… Read more »
More than $9 million has been awarded to Australian startups focused on space supply chain solutions for NASA’s Artemis program for lunar exploration. The recipients include Victorian startup NextAero, which is developing cryogenic rocket propellants, and South Australia’s Neumann Space, which is focused on electric spacecraft propulsion. The both received $1 million grants from the… Read more »
Having broken new ground in health tech for high-risk situations, Canaria Technologies is taking its next giant leap – to infinity and beyond. The Brisbane-based startup is gearing up to take its pioneering tech in predictive biometrics to the next frontier: outer space. Canaria’s wearables, which combine data about how the human body functions with… Read more »
If someone were to ask you how space technologies impact your daily life, or how much Australia should invest in space, would you have an immediate answer or would you wonder why these questions were even being asked? Understanding what the average Australian thinks about space is essential – voters and taxpayers will only encourage… Read more »
Aotearoa New Zealand is the latest country to enter the expanding and competitive international space market. In the aerospace strategy and national space policy, the government lays out how it intends to grow the domestic space sector by launching rockets and satellites and promoting Earth observation research. The documents indicate the government’s general priorities in… Read more »
Adelaide satellite tech startup Fleet Space Technologies has bagged its first contract in the lucrative defence sector, signing a $6.4 million contract with Australia’s Defence Space Command. The agreement will see Fleet’s next-generation of Centauri satellites used to develop and demonstrate a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite communications system focused on tactical communications and data… Read more »
Sir Richard Branson’s space tech startup Virgin Orbit, which launches rockets mid-air from under a 747, is shutting down after it failed to find more funding. CNBC reports that Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart told staff most operations will cease “for the foreseeable future” with 675 people losing their jobs and a skeleton staff of… Read more »
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