In an exclusive interview with TOI’s Chethan Kumar, Australian Space Agency Head Enrico Palermo reveals the depth and breadth of the burgeoning space partnership between Australia and India. From supporting India’s ambitious Gaganyaan mission to launching joint satellites, Palermo outlines how this collaboration is set to transform the Indo-Pacific space landscape. He discusses Australia’s role in India’s lunar missions and the potential for future cooperation in areas ranging from deep space exploration to climate monitoring.As both nations look to expand their commercial space sectors, Palermo emphasises the mutual benefits and challenges of this strategic alliance, highlighting its importance in the broader context of regional cooperation and technological advancement.
Excerpts:
■ How does the India-Australia space collaboration fit into the broader Indo-Pacific strategy?
Yeah, so Australia and India are comprehensive strategic partners and through that our govt’s identified that space was an area of cooperation to deepen that partnership, deepen how we can have our industries work together to work on applications that benefit the region more broadly. And so I’m here in Bengaluru this week as part of the BSX 2024 to really celebrate that partnership and see how we can deepen it into the future.
■ What’s the progress on setting up the tracking station at Cocos (Keeling) Islands for Gaganyaan?
So we’re honoured to be supporting and very excited to be supporting Gaganyaan. It’s an inspirational mission and certainly encouraging to see India attempt to be the fourth country to put humans into space. So one of the key parts of the way the Australian govt is supporting Gaganyaan, you’re right, is by locating a tracking station on Cocos (Keeling) Islands. So we do that through an implementing arrangement from a govt-to-govt perspective and the reason India has chosen the Islands is when you look at the trajectory of the Gaganyaan flights, it’s the optimal spot to do tracking telemetry and control. An Indian team has visited the islands, they’ve surveyed the site and confirmed it’s the right site and they’re now working with an Australian project manager to set up the facilities.
■ Are there other specific collaborations on the human space programme?
Yeah, that’s something we’re going to talk about with our counterparts at Isro this week but, you know, supporting the tracking station is the first piece. We’re also working on supporting India with scenarios where you might have emergency scenarios. So, again, if you look at the trajectory of the spacecraft, if there’s any aborts and a need to recover the crew, it will be in Australian waters. So we’re making sure that it’s there to support India should there be any contingencies in that matter. From there on, we’re exploring with India how we could contribute to Gaganyaan being a partner in science, partner in industry.
Australia can bring expertise in applied space medicine, life sciences. If you look at our work we do in Antarctica or remote medicine in Australia, that’s very transferable to human spaceflight. As the ambitions grow for robotic exploration, how do we bring in Australia’s robotics and autonomy experience? Other areas might be optical communication. So, to date, a lot of, well, most of its radio frequency. With optical or lasers, you can communicate at a much higher bandwidth. These are some of the areas we look forward to exploring with our Indian counterparts on how we can integrate Australian science and technology to support the overall aspiration.
■ Australia is sending a lunar rover as part of the Nasa programme. Will the consortiums be selected and announced this year? Also, will this be part of the CLPS-4 with Intuitive Machines?
So, we’re fortunate to be a partner with Nasa to take an Australian designed and built rover later this decade. In terms of the status, we had two Australian teams of various industry and academia come together and they’ve completed phase one, which was to deliver to the govt a design and a plan on how they would build the next rover. So, as we speak, our team is assessing those proposals and later this year, we expect our minister to announce who will go into phase two and so the phase two team will then build the rover and they’ll operate it on the surface of the Moon. The actual CLPS mission hasn’t been announced yet but again, later this decade is what we’re targeting.
■ Coming back to India, are you looking at any joint programmes…Deep space or satellite?
I’ll talk to three initiatives that are in progress. Back to the rover programme, I got goosebumps watching Pragyan (Chandrayaan-3 rover) land on Moon just over a year ago and congratulations to everyone in India on that wonderful achievement. Because one day, I can’t wait to see Australia’s rover do something similar. We were proud to support that scientific mission with communications from our networks in Australia. So, we already partner on deep space exploration from a communications perspective.
The second one is, as part of the G20 celebrations last year, Prime Minister Modi announced the G20 climate satellite and Australia is looking at how we can contribute a payload to that satellite in various earth observation technologies. And then the third one, and this is something we’re going to showcase at the expo in Bengaluru this week, is what we call the international space investment initiative programme. This has seen the Australian govt invest AU$18 million into three missions. These are satellite missions that will see satellites fly to space and they’re led by an Australian company but with Indian partners.
And that’s seen some firsts such as the first dedicated small satellite launch vehicle mission for Australia between Australia and India, thanks to the chairman and the team at Nsil, for example. So, the many firsts and all three missions are really targeted on applications that are about improving life on Earth and also sustainability of the space environment.
■ So far as collaboration with the industries and academia goes, are there any success stories? How is Australia encouraging this?
Even before we had the AU$ 18 million investment, we had the Australia India Strategic Resource Fund and that has invested over AU$ 100 million to drive those exact sorts of collaboration in industry and academia. The three missions we funded, including the Space Machines Company and (India’s) Digantara on characterising the space environment. Digantara was actually incubated in Australia at the University of South Australia’s Catalyst programme and I think that just shows you the depth of exchange between the two nations from a startup ecosystem but also an academic investment and that’s what we’re really trying to drive here is how can we leverage each nation’s scientific expertise and comparative advantages… Collaborations are deep and each programme that’s been funded has a level of Indian and Australian academia involved.
■ Australia so far doesn’t boast of a launch vehicle capability. What can we expect on that front?
The Australian govt at this point is not funding development of a launch vehicle. However, we think Australia can be a significant regional hub for both space launch and returns. So, if you think about launching rockets, you want to launch them typically from unpopulated areas, low air traffic, low maritime traffic and do it in a place where you can protect your sensitive technology. So, Australia ticks all those boxes and so we’ve seen several spaceports in development around the nation.
Some of them have now had rocket launch attempts or they’ve launched sounding rockets today. We do have a domestic company, Gilmour Space Technologies that is developing a sovereign Australian rocket. So, it’s quite a dynamic part of our space ecosystem and we are looking at removing all the barriers to have a fruitful ecosystem.
One of the things we did early in the Australian Space Agency, we’re only six years old, was to update our Space Act. So, we now have what’s called the Space Launches and Returns Act, which allows you to licence a spaceport or licence to launch a rocket and that Act is fully activated. We continue to enhance it but several nations are putting in place commercial space acts but haven’t, I guess, operationalised them. Recently, we signed with the US what’s called a Technology Safeguards Agreement and that allows US companies to bring launch vehicles and satellites to Australia.
All these things are coming together to contribute to building an ecosystem. We have interest from outside the US as well. Only a few months ago, we saw a German rocket launch from South Australia. The other part, which is an opportunity, now note on the National Space Day, India has talked about a sample return mission from the Moon, which is amazing. Australia has all the conditions to support returns for our govt industry partners. So, you can re-enter a capsule from space over a sparsely populated area in a safe way and we have some companies like Varda Space Technologies that will look to leverage that in the coming period.
And that’s interesting too because we’re seeing a commercialisation of LEO. So, in microgravity, you can do some very interesting science because you take out that G vector, so you can see second order effects. You can also manufacture very pure crystals on orbit, for example. And so, we’re very, I guess, bullish on the opportunity to orbit and then return from space to Australia.
■ India is also looking to establish its own space station. Would that be something that you’re interested in partnering with?
We have not had any talks yet with India on their announcement of their space station. Again, I think what Australia can bring is our communications expertise, the work we do in microgravity around life sciences and pharmaceutical research. So, space stations on orbit are an opportunity for Australian science to get to space. And so, that’s something ahead of us, but certainly as India develops it.
■ In the next decade, where do you see the India-Australia space collaboration go? And what are some of the challenges that you foresee…?
We’ll see three satellites launched as part of our investment initiative. These will be joint Australian-Indian satellites. And I think that activity, that momentum will drive further investment. And so, I see a deepening of those industry-to-industry collaborations leveraging our respective strengths. We’ll proudly be there when India sends humans into space for the first time and also through its continued exploration of the Moon. So, we see ourselves as that long-term partner. We’re collaborating with India on some initiatives under the Quad Space Working Group, such as looking at how we can address, this is an India-led proposal, address extreme precipitation, which is obviously becoming more prevalent as an impact from climate change. In terms of challenges, I see challenges but also opportunities.
India has a long history in space, as is Australia. We were there at the beginning of the space age and for many reasons didn’t continue on that cadence. But we both have deep expertise. But India obviously has deep capabilities and has space power in the world. Our commercial sectors, though, are at a similar rate of maturity. So, we formed the space agency in 2018 to develop Australia’s commercial spaceflight ecosystem. India formed IN-SPACe only a couple of years later and now has the space policy, which is very progressive. And so, both are very dynamic. We have a majority of small to medium enterprises and startups that are looking to scale. And so, how do we learn from each other and how do you scale these into medium enterprises that can drive revenue, can drive benefits here on Earth? And so, with that is experimentation. And really, both in the Australian public and Indian public is to understand that we will have hiccups along the way. Rockets and satellites, the first time you develop it, there’ll be challenges. That’s an opportunity to learn. It’s not a failure.
■ You spoke about three satellite launches that would happen as part of this partnership. Could you elaborate a bit on them?
So, the first one will be under the Space Machines Company project. They call it MAITRI. And this will be the largest ever Australian-built satellite. So, there’s a milestone there, about a 450 kg satellite to do on-orbit inspection and servicing and space debris mitigation. So, really targeting, again, this, I think what’s going to become quite a fast-growing market for on-orbit services.
The second one is LATConnect 60, who are building a small satellite that, using shortwave infrared, will be detecting methane and carbon emissions from space, but at a very high resolution. So, targeting certain sites to measure that. That’s going to contribute to a network of satellites around the planet that are really going to tell us how expansive the CO2 and other emissions are. So, that has a very important objective to help account and help mitigate carbon emissions into the future.
And then the third will be a satellite built by a company called Skykraft, who are all partnering with various Indian organisations, looking at how you can enhance communications amongst satellites in large constellations. And that has benefits whether it’s weather forecasting, earth observation. And so, we’ll see at least two of those satellites launched from India as part of the deal. So, a dedicated SSLV launch for Space Machines with NSIL and then we’ll see the LatConnect 60 satellite launch with Skyroot, who’s one of the upcoming launch startup companies here in India.
■ Is there a timeline for this first mission, the SSLV and Skyroot launches?
The SSLV launch would be in the next two to three years. So, I think 2026. Skyroot should be around the same time.
Excerpts:
■ How does the India-Australia space collaboration fit into the broader Indo-Pacific strategy?
Yeah, so Australia and India are comprehensive strategic partners and through that our govt’s identified that space was an area of cooperation to deepen that partnership, deepen how we can have our industries work together to work on applications that benefit the region more broadly. And so I’m here in Bengaluru this week as part of the BSX 2024 to really celebrate that partnership and see how we can deepen it into the future.
■ What’s the progress on setting up the tracking station at Cocos (Keeling) Islands for Gaganyaan?
So we’re honoured to be supporting and very excited to be supporting Gaganyaan. It’s an inspirational mission and certainly encouraging to see India attempt to be the fourth country to put humans into space. So one of the key parts of the way the Australian govt is supporting Gaganyaan, you’re right, is by locating a tracking station on Cocos (Keeling) Islands. So we do that through an implementing arrangement from a govt-to-govt perspective and the reason India has chosen the Islands is when you look at the trajectory of the Gaganyaan flights, it’s the optimal spot to do tracking telemetry and control. An Indian team has visited the islands, they’ve surveyed the site and confirmed it’s the right site and they’re now working with an Australian project manager to set up the facilities.
■ Are there other specific collaborations on the human space programme?
Yeah, that’s something we’re going to talk about with our counterparts at Isro this week but, you know, supporting the tracking station is the first piece. We’re also working on supporting India with scenarios where you might have emergency scenarios. So, again, if you look at the trajectory of the spacecraft, if there’s any aborts and a need to recover the crew, it will be in Australian waters. So we’re making sure that it’s there to support India should there be any contingencies in that matter. From there on, we’re exploring with India how we could contribute to Gaganyaan being a partner in science, partner in industry.
Australia can bring expertise in applied space medicine, life sciences. If you look at our work we do in Antarctica or remote medicine in Australia, that’s very transferable to human spaceflight. As the ambitions grow for robotic exploration, how do we bring in Australia’s robotics and autonomy experience? Other areas might be optical communication. So, to date, a lot of, well, most of its radio frequency. With optical or lasers, you can communicate at a much higher bandwidth. These are some of the areas we look forward to exploring with our Indian counterparts on how we can integrate Australian science and technology to support the overall aspiration.
■ Australia is sending a lunar rover as part of the Nasa programme. Will the consortiums be selected and announced this year? Also, will this be part of the CLPS-4 with Intuitive Machines?
So, we’re fortunate to be a partner with Nasa to take an Australian designed and built rover later this decade. In terms of the status, we had two Australian teams of various industry and academia come together and they’ve completed phase one, which was to deliver to the govt a design and a plan on how they would build the next rover. So, as we speak, our team is assessing those proposals and later this year, we expect our minister to announce who will go into phase two and so the phase two team will then build the rover and they’ll operate it on the surface of the Moon. The actual CLPS mission hasn’t been announced yet but again, later this decade is what we’re targeting.
■ Coming back to India, are you looking at any joint programmes…Deep space or satellite?
I’ll talk to three initiatives that are in progress. Back to the rover programme, I got goosebumps watching Pragyan (Chandrayaan-3 rover) land on Moon just over a year ago and congratulations to everyone in India on that wonderful achievement. Because one day, I can’t wait to see Australia’s rover do something similar. We were proud to support that scientific mission with communications from our networks in Australia. So, we already partner on deep space exploration from a communications perspective.
The second one is, as part of the G20 celebrations last year, Prime Minister Modi announced the G20 climate satellite and Australia is looking at how we can contribute a payload to that satellite in various earth observation technologies. And then the third one, and this is something we’re going to showcase at the expo in Bengaluru this week, is what we call the international space investment initiative programme. This has seen the Australian govt invest AU$18 million into three missions. These are satellite missions that will see satellites fly to space and they’re led by an Australian company but with Indian partners.
And that’s seen some firsts such as the first dedicated small satellite launch vehicle mission for Australia between Australia and India, thanks to the chairman and the team at Nsil, for example. So, the many firsts and all three missions are really targeted on applications that are about improving life on Earth and also sustainability of the space environment.
■ So far as collaboration with the industries and academia goes, are there any success stories? How is Australia encouraging this?
Even before we had the AU$ 18 million investment, we had the Australia India Strategic Resource Fund and that has invested over AU$ 100 million to drive those exact sorts of collaboration in industry and academia. The three missions we funded, including the Space Machines Company and (India’s) Digantara on characterising the space environment. Digantara was actually incubated in Australia at the University of South Australia’s Catalyst programme and I think that just shows you the depth of exchange between the two nations from a startup ecosystem but also an academic investment and that’s what we’re really trying to drive here is how can we leverage each nation’s scientific expertise and comparative advantages… Collaborations are deep and each programme that’s been funded has a level of Indian and Australian academia involved.
■ Australia so far doesn’t boast of a launch vehicle capability. What can we expect on that front?
The Australian govt at this point is not funding development of a launch vehicle. However, we think Australia can be a significant regional hub for both space launch and returns. So, if you think about launching rockets, you want to launch them typically from unpopulated areas, low air traffic, low maritime traffic and do it in a place where you can protect your sensitive technology. So, Australia ticks all those boxes and so we’ve seen several spaceports in development around the nation.
Some of them have now had rocket launch attempts or they’ve launched sounding rockets today. We do have a domestic company, Gilmour Space Technologies that is developing a sovereign Australian rocket. So, it’s quite a dynamic part of our space ecosystem and we are looking at removing all the barriers to have a fruitful ecosystem.
One of the things we did early in the Australian Space Agency, we’re only six years old, was to update our Space Act. So, we now have what’s called the Space Launches and Returns Act, which allows you to licence a spaceport or licence to launch a rocket and that Act is fully activated. We continue to enhance it but several nations are putting in place commercial space acts but haven’t, I guess, operationalised them. Recently, we signed with the US what’s called a Technology Safeguards Agreement and that allows US companies to bring launch vehicles and satellites to Australia.
All these things are coming together to contribute to building an ecosystem. We have interest from outside the US as well. Only a few months ago, we saw a German rocket launch from South Australia. The other part, which is an opportunity, now note on the National Space Day, India has talked about a sample return mission from the Moon, which is amazing. Australia has all the conditions to support returns for our govt industry partners. So, you can re-enter a capsule from space over a sparsely populated area in a safe way and we have some companies like Varda Space Technologies that will look to leverage that in the coming period.
And that’s interesting too because we’re seeing a commercialisation of LEO. So, in microgravity, you can do some very interesting science because you take out that G vector, so you can see second order effects. You can also manufacture very pure crystals on orbit, for example. And so, we’re very, I guess, bullish on the opportunity to orbit and then return from space to Australia.
■ India is also looking to establish its own space station. Would that be something that you’re interested in partnering with?
We have not had any talks yet with India on their announcement of their space station. Again, I think what Australia can bring is our communications expertise, the work we do in microgravity around life sciences and pharmaceutical research. So, space stations on orbit are an opportunity for Australian science to get to space. And so, that’s something ahead of us, but certainly as India develops it.
■ In the next decade, where do you see the India-Australia space collaboration go? And what are some of the challenges that you foresee…?
We’ll see three satellites launched as part of our investment initiative. These will be joint Australian-Indian satellites. And I think that activity, that momentum will drive further investment. And so, I see a deepening of those industry-to-industry collaborations leveraging our respective strengths. We’ll proudly be there when India sends humans into space for the first time and also through its continued exploration of the Moon. So, we see ourselves as that long-term partner. We’re collaborating with India on some initiatives under the Quad Space Working Group, such as looking at how we can address, this is an India-led proposal, address extreme precipitation, which is obviously becoming more prevalent as an impact from climate change. In terms of challenges, I see challenges but also opportunities.
India has a long history in space, as is Australia. We were there at the beginning of the space age and for many reasons didn’t continue on that cadence. But we both have deep expertise. But India obviously has deep capabilities and has space power in the world. Our commercial sectors, though, are at a similar rate of maturity. So, we formed the space agency in 2018 to develop Australia’s commercial spaceflight ecosystem. India formed IN-SPACe only a couple of years later and now has the space policy, which is very progressive. And so, both are very dynamic. We have a majority of small to medium enterprises and startups that are looking to scale. And so, how do we learn from each other and how do you scale these into medium enterprises that can drive revenue, can drive benefits here on Earth? And so, with that is experimentation. And really, both in the Australian public and Indian public is to understand that we will have hiccups along the way. Rockets and satellites, the first time you develop it, there’ll be challenges. That’s an opportunity to learn. It’s not a failure.
■ You spoke about three satellite launches that would happen as part of this partnership. Could you elaborate a bit on them?
So, the first one will be under the Space Machines Company project. They call it MAITRI. And this will be the largest ever Australian-built satellite. So, there’s a milestone there, about a 450 kg satellite to do on-orbit inspection and servicing and space debris mitigation. So, really targeting, again, this, I think what’s going to become quite a fast-growing market for on-orbit services.
The second one is LATConnect 60, who are building a small satellite that, using shortwave infrared, will be detecting methane and carbon emissions from space, but at a very high resolution. So, targeting certain sites to measure that. That’s going to contribute to a network of satellites around the planet that are really going to tell us how expansive the CO2 and other emissions are. So, that has a very important objective to help account and help mitigate carbon emissions into the future.
And then the third will be a satellite built by a company called Skykraft, who are all partnering with various Indian organisations, looking at how you can enhance communications amongst satellites in large constellations. And that has benefits whether it’s weather forecasting, earth observation. And so, we’ll see at least two of those satellites launched from India as part of the deal. So, a dedicated SSLV launch for Space Machines with NSIL and then we’ll see the LatConnect 60 satellite launch with Skyroot, who’s one of the upcoming launch startup companies here in India.
■ Is there a timeline for this first mission, the SSLV and Skyroot launches?
The SSLV launch would be in the next two to three years. So, I think 2026. Skyroot should be around the same time.