AUSTRALIA IN SPACE COVER FEATURE
The centrality of resilience to Australia’s space capabilities By Julia Dickinson, Chief Engineer, Military Satellite Communications Lockheed Martin Australia
12 | Australia in Space Magazine
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ustralia’s growing emphasis on sovereignty in space is capturing the public’s imagination and spurring our industry and research sectors to greater heights. Perhaps most importantly, it is built on a recognition of the unprecedented role that space plays in our day-to-day lives. In the past few years the increasing commercialisation of space, enabled in part by advances in technology and lower launch costs, has helped the local space industry to flourish. Since 2017 alone, we have seen the establishment of dozens of space start-ups, seven Australian designed and built satellites manoeuvred into orbit, as well as the first commercial launches from an Australian spaceport, and for NASA, no less. A welcome evolution in our public policy settings has also been key to this growth. From the earliest days of our burgeoning space industry, Australian engineers and
scientists struggled to obtain political support. Today, we have the Australian Space Agency and the Defence Space Command. Governments at all levels and persuasions are now key enablers, as they recognise the value of a sovereign space industry. We only need to look to Ukraine, for example, to see both the critical importance of a space-based communications capability and the vulnerabilities of these systems. With its terrestrial communications infrastructure badly degraded, Ukraine also found its existing satellite communications system had been hacked. In order to preserve its ability to fight and to maintain operations of critical infrastructure, transportable and mobile terminals from another satellite system were quickly flown in. As the 2020 Force Structure Plan notes, “the public and Defence are increasingly reliant on satellite-based