ASITII Festival of Space 2021 Wrap-up & Australia in Space Magazine Preview Edition 2022

This roadmap is symbolic of a pivotal moment in time for the Australian civil space sector; an opportunity that must be harnessed now to the benefit of our industry and society into the future.

- Enrico Palermo, Head, Australian Space Agency, November 2021

Welcome to Australia’s newest space sector publication. The Australian Space Agency’s mission is to triple the size of the national civil space sector to $12 billion and create an additional 20,000 jobs by 2030. So, it’s only natural there needs to be greater effort to amplify awareness and celebrate the achievements and challenges that lay ahead.

The Australia space industry clearly faces a challenging and exciting period as it expands the development of launch capability, along with the alignment to STEM sectors, advanced manufacturing sector and defence sector. Australia will be challenged to have a purely sovereign space capability and partnerships with the US, UK, France, Japan, India, South Korea and Singapore will be critical and broadly applied. This is also all in competition with China and Russia and hence the defence domain in space is fundamental and underlines the need for sovereign capability.

Crewed flights to the Moon and Mars, including the establishment of permanent human bases are a core global objective but major technological advances and governance solutions are needed to overcome the myriad of challenges that confront human survival in outer space. These challenges provide valuable opportunities for Australia’s multidisciplinary research to engage with new space endeavours.

In addition to our Space and Defence news channel and space interviews conducted throughout 2020 and 2021, we have expanded further. During October’s World Space Week and the ASITII Festival of Space, held throughout November, we heard from an incredible line up of over 60 speakers, covering the most important and intriguing topics in the space domain. Australia is yet to develop a clear national space strategy, but it is widely recognised space is a global business and broad in its skill and science discipline reach.

Coinciding with the ASITII 2021 series, the Australian Space Agency released the Earth Observation (EO) from Space Roadmap, the second in a series of 7 roadmaps which outlines a 10-year plan. This roadmap prioritises 5 focus segments over the next decade:

1. Australian EO Missions and Payloads

2. Data Quality Assurance and Integrity Monitoring

3. Enhanced Data Management

4. International EO Partnerships and Leadership

5. Access to International Data and Missions

In support of the Australian space sector roadmaps, engagement with industry and the broader community is required to ensure sustainable societal support of space operations, as well as to attract the next, emerging generation of Australians who will work and, hopefully, be in space.

We trust you will support our own endeavour to engage, educate and entertain the Australian space sector and its interdependent sectors, such as robotics and advanced manufacturing. Across our channels we keep abreast with the latest developments and look forward to sharing these in publications such as these. Enjoy the reading, watching and listening.

Chris Cubbage CPP, CISA, GAICD

Director and Executive Editor