Perth’s Curtin University leading the way in the Australian space sector

By Andrew Curran Correspondent Australia in Space

Perth's Curtin University is fast making a name for itself in the space sector after spending years growing its space research institutes, recruiting top-flight academics, and building connections with the space sector at home and abroad.

The Times Higher Education 2023 World University Rankings rank Curtin as one of the top 250 universities in the world and 36th in the young university rankings. Evidently, Curtin is carving out a substantial niche in space research and emerging as Australia's top space university.

Professor Melanie Johnston-Hollitt, an astrophysicist and Director at both the Curtin Institute for Computation (CiC) and the Australian Space Data Analysis Facility (ASDAF), says Curtin's growing space reputation is due to the interests of individual academic groups and the university's overarching strategy. The establishment of the Australian Space Agency (ASA) in 2018 and the growing commercial interest in using space data have also accelerated growth in this area.

"On an individual level, you have people who are bringing groups together at a senior, professorial level, and from a capability point of view for Curtin, is moving into an emerging sector that has not been stifled by too many regulations here in Australia," Johnston-Hollitt said.

"In an era when we are starting to see a huge amount of commercialisation in space, it's a good strategic direction for a university to move in, particularly a technologically strong university like Curtin."

Professor Phil Bland is the Director of the Space Science and Technology Centre (SSTC) at Curtin University and Director of the Australian outpost of the NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute. His enthusiasm for space and Curtin’s work in the sector is infectious.

The SSTC is the Southern Hemisphere's largest planetary research institute - around twenty PhD and post-doctoral research students work at the SSTC at any one time, along with a rotating roster of intern undergraduates who Bland says are the backbone of the program. The Centre is also home to the Binar Space program. Binar-1 launched in August 2021 onboard the SpaceX CRS-23 International Space Station resupply mission. The mission's primary goal was to demonstrate the technology, which ended 14 months later when the satellite re-entered Earth's atmosphere. Bland says further launches are planned for later this year.

The SSTC is evidence of Australian research institutes’ growing partnerships with tier-one international space agencies. In the SSTC's case, those agencies include JAXA, ESA, and NASA.Binar-1 was launched into orbit from the Japanese Experiment Module Kibo on the ISS through the Japanese space startup Space BD, with ESA providing mission control capability. More recently, the SSTC partnered with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory spin-off company, Chascii, with the goal of developing the first ever CubeSat with a tilting optical communications terminal.

John Curtin Distinguished Professor Steven Tingay, astrophysicist and Director of the Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy (CIRA), says much of his industry and defencefocused work at the university is about space domain awareness. He describes that as "translating technologies and techniques out of radio astronomy. This includes technologies such as the antennas and the signal processing electronics, all the way to the data processing algorithms, and the post-processing analysis."

Last year, Curtin signed a formal partnership with Nova Systems, bringing the research out of the development stage and into the operational and commercial phases. "Not that the research ever ends," says Tingay. "We're constantly working to improve the algorithms and come up with new data processing strategies. That's always an ongoing process, but we have a pretty impressive set of core capabilities now that we're ready to take operational."

The academics are enthusiastic about the future direction of the Australian space sector, saying there is plenty of opportunity for Curtin University and the broader Australian space industry. There is a substantial push to develop space remote robotic capabilities in Australia, an area the country is already a leader in. Bland doesn't dismiss this, but a true scientist at heart, he says it's important not to forget the research. "We should focus on science," he says, noting that it is the bedrock of the space industry.

Johnston-Hollitt says the role of remote robotics, derived from the mining sector, distinguishes Western Australia. She is also a big champion of the state's other space sector attributes. "There are two really interesting things here," she said. "One is the mining industry which has been geared up to develop infrastructure at scale quickly in remote and hostile environments. There is a huge amount of transferrable knowledge from the mining sector into the space sector.

“Then you’ve got the state of Western Australia itself. When you look at space-adjacent technologies such as radio telescopes, Western Australia is probably the best place in the world to put a radio telescope, and we have several thanks to the government establishing a radio-quiet zone in the Mid-West. We are already seeing spinouts from those astronomy research instruments into the broader space sector. Western Australia has a huge number of attractive requirements and capabilities associated with the space sector - that is a real point of difference for us when compared to Australia’s east coast.”

Tingay says he and his colleagues are well-positioned to equip students with the skills to work in the space sector and elsewhere. He says studying astronomy gives students solid maths, physics, engineering, and computing skills, which have applications beyond the space sector. Tingay talks about AUKUS, its future workforce requirements, and how he and his colleagues at Curtin can help.

"Behind the headline of some of these announcements, around the world I'm detecting a bit of a race to invest in fundamental STEM skills. Australia has a pretty small population. That means we've got to be good at building those skills, and that's something that Curtin is massively focused on,” he said.

"Astronomy is a really easy sell to get kids in the door, exposed to all of the mathematics, all of the physics, all of the computer sciences, all of those fundamentals that a bit later in their lives are going to be completely transferable to lots of other domains."