THE ARTEMIS MISSIONS TO MARS: AUSTRALIA, WATCH THIS SPACE

By Gregory M Hunter,

Vice President, National Space Society of Australia

Consisting of over 100 employees Queensland-based Gilmour Space Technologies is presently one of Australia’s largest space industry companies. © Gilmour Space Technologies.

Forty-nine years since man was last on the Moon, NASA’s Artemis Missions will see our return to the lunar surface – this time to stay - and to serve as a checkpoint on our way to Mars. Now is the time for Australians to integrate themselves into this global ambition.

There are some great objectives set for 2024, and NASA is relying on a global effort, including enterprising commercial partners. With this deadline approaching, and a private industry space race underway, international space interest has been rejuvenated. The missions’ formative years offer unique opportunities for Australian business to establish itself in the supporting supply chain, and influence the future of the international space industry and economy.

Australia is responding to this call to action. Years of exposure to our harsh land has bred talent and skill in areas applicable to space. Currently, there is focus on stimulating Australian businesses that use space technology, and promoting ourselves to the world as resourceful and innovative people.

The Moon to Mars Initiative is a 2019 partnership between the Australian Government and NASA, to be funded $150m over five years. The initiative has three parts: the supply chain program, demonstrator program, and trailblazer program, with grants to nurture rapidly growing interest in space business feasibility. The trailblazer program is the initiative’s flagship, directly supporting NASA’s Artemis Missions, and the following expeditions to Mars. NATIONAL INITIATIVES

Australian companies are using consortiums, including Seven Sisters and Lunar Ascent, to apply for the trailblazer program. These consortiums are curated for exploration and communication tools development.

Seven Sisters is a fleet initiative, unifying Australian companies to deliver super-scalable exploration tools for Earth through to the Moon, and finally, to Mars. The journey outlined by Seven Sisters ensures that our integral role is sustained into the establishment of a Martian colony. Alongside AROSE and Fugro, they are promoting Australia’s outstanding work in robotics and remote operation, so that we may facilitate R&D off Earth.

Lunar Ascent is identifying and utilising companies that showcase Australia’s space capability, bringing Space Machines Company (SMC), Deloitte, Inovor, and Sitael together. Their Lunar Pathfinder Mission focuses on Australian nano-satellites destined for lunar orbit. Through SMC, Pathfinder will deliver a qualified Australian orbital for payload missions in both lunar and low-Earth orbits. These positions are open for Australian government, companies and universities. The inclusion of enterprise and academia can inspire, encourage, develop, and sustain Australia’s multi-level engagement with space, so that we may all see it as a viable future. Additionally, this strategy will cultivate a competitive lunar supply chain, and help Australians both realise and actualise their potential role in sustained space development.

Regardless of whether these consortiums are successful in their application for trailblazer, they intend to pursue their current objectives. A recent influx of venture capital interest has resulted in Australian space companies receiving significant funding, such as the $61m raised by Gilmour Space – the largest private investment by an Australian space company.

If you are interested to know more about the newly forming supply chains, keep an eye out for the to-be-announced National Space Society (NSS) New Horizons Summit.

Contributing Defence Writer

The company has part ownership and direct tasking access to an existing on-orbit high-resolution satellite (LC60 001), providing exceptional high resolution multispectral data with global access. Satellite tasking, data processing and data management are all conducted in Australia. LC60 provides raw imagery data and colour balanced, pan-sharpened image files. Value added services, such as super resolution post-processing and other analytics services, are provided in-house and via its Australian partners.

LC60 can utilise the current data and derived products from LC60 001 in a direct and responsive strategy to assess the market, create or identify the product or service, and deliver safely. In line with the Australian 2020 Defence Strategic Update position on the importance of the space domain, LC60 has a constellation expansion program in place with a follow-on launch in 2022, which will combine imagery and IoT data for deeper insights into our rapidly changing world. The satellites will have a near equatorial orbit for fast revisit data collection.

Company Managing Director, Mr Venkat Pillay states, “We are pleased to be in a position to offer a significant capability and timely access for Australian defence and security users. Government end users have the opportunity of directly tasking our satellite to receive critical and timely imagery data in a secure manner. Our automated data processing capabilities allows for certainty and rapid turn-around of highresolution imagery at a competitive price point.”

LC60 has an innovative, flexible and capital-efficient strategy in developing and applying technology, taking advantage of current ground-breaking initiatives, including high speed, on-board computing with massively increased memory and processing capacity, sensors and data types, data transmission and fusion, and value-added products. LC60 is strongly supported by its partners Fugro, Curtin University, AWS, Arlula and CSIRO in Australia, as well as major space industry players around the world.

In the areas of defence and intelligence, LC60 meets the Australian space-based Intelligence, Surveillance

LC60 core team and directors. © WA DEFENCE REVIEW. and Reconnaissance (ISR) needs by providing direct access to LC60 001 data via a ground station nominated by the client, secure processing of that data and direct transmission to the client. This process is managed and carried out in Australia under the highest security protocols. The initial focus is on servicing the Australian federal and state market, with additional governmental ISR needs to be targeted only with countries with trusted security relationships, such as the UK Space bridge programme and others. Although other satellite imagery providers launch satellites globally, they do not have an Asia Pacific regional focus. Australia, by virtue of its large landmass and the scale of its land and maritime borders, is underserved by existing sub-meter high resolution satellite capabilities. LC60 is focused on filling this critical gap by providing an Australianfocused, Australia-first service. State governments can utilise a virtual access system with specifically developed products and services to address critical issues in planning and surveying, environmental assessment and protection, heritage assessment and control, disaster management, and planning and support for agricultural and other critical industries, such as mining, oil and gas. The many advantages of LC60’s state-of-the-art technology and services apply to the broader Australian market too, with the company having the capacity to address rapidly growing commercial needs for Earth data acquisition and analytics.

By Terry van Haren,

President and Director of LeoLabs Australia

Space Domain Awareness (SDA) is the foundation of space safety and security. At LeoLabs, our vision is to ‘enable safe, secure and sustainable space operations by providing persistent, reliable, responsive, cost effective and real time’ SDA services through our end-to-end mapping platform for space.

LeoLabs is the world’s only commercial space surveillance radar company. We design, build, own, and operate a growing global network of phased array radar systems. We currently operate from four sites with six radars. Our S-band onedimension phased array radar systems are able to detect and measure small debrissized objects down to 2cm in diameter.

Our first S-Band radar, the Kiwi Space Radar, was commissioned in November 2019 and collects on average 160,000 measurements per day or 8000 per hour. Combined with our latest Costa Rica Space Radar and our other systems, LeoLabs is now the biggest provider of object data in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), and we supply 96% of data to the Unified Data Library for the US Space Force.

While our radars provide all weather, day and night, persistent coverage of LEO, our data processing occurs in the AWS cloud in real time. Orbital determination, space object tracking, and space event reporting all occur within minutes following an object passing over one of our radar sites. After updating an object’s orbital state, space object tracks are propagated for seven days in a one versus all analysis to update our space event reporting service. These services include our award-winning Collision Avoidance (CA) service, Orbit Change and Stability reports, Rendezvous and Proximity Operations (RPO), Collision on Launch Assessment (COLA), and Launch and Early Orbit Processing (LEOP). We have a growing list of satisfied commercial customers for these services. We also provide direct support to the US National Space Defense Centre through the Joint Commercial Operations cell.

LeoLabs respects that Australia requires sovereign control, national resilience, and redundancy in its SDA architecture. We at LeoLabs Australia are planning to develop an active radar-based SDA architecture for Australia as part of our global network. We are also collaborating with Australian industry to licence the manufacture of LeoLabs next generation 2D phased array modular radar systems in Australia, under the

In 2019, LeoLabs built the Kiwi Space Radar facility which is located on New Zealand’s South Island. The S-Band radar measures the growing problem of space debris in low Earth orbit. © LeoLabs. Australian Government’s Modern Manufacturing Initiative. If successful in this EOI, we will rapidly develop a Space Surveillance Network which will make Australia a space surveillance superpower. An active radar-based architecture that will enable us to detect and track ‘every object in every orbit in Australia’s orbital area of interest’. We will also plan to rehost the LeoLabs data platform on an Australian cloud provider to provide sovereign control, national resilience and redundancy in even the most challenging cyber environments. Space is a global common, requiring cooperation between governments and agencies, and collaboration within the space industry. We are planning on collaborating with other Australian sensor providers to generate an integrated SDA architecture for Australia. Like a modern fighter aircraft, a weapon system is built around an active radar and data processing; with the integration of electro-optical, passive and orbital sensors to characterise, and if necessary, conduct targeting. We believe we can achieve this level of system integration by collaborating with Australia’s commercial space sensor providers (ground and orbital), and develop an integrated weapon system that will provide Australia with the space domain awareness that it needs to maintain safety and security in space operations. The bottom line is that with its growing network of phased array radars and cloud-based data platform, LeoLabs will transform SDA in Australia.