Australian Defence Space Projects - Steve Henry

all right so yeah as the boss mentioned spaces is certainly an emerging field and something is going to become increasingly important over the next few years so thanks very much to the AP DC for organizing this opportunity to help bring you all along on what we're trying to achieve there at the moment defense doesn't do a lot of space training for its people from IET at any point really unless you really go out and hunt for it so I generally start these discussions with a quick quick you know 101 on space where it is what it is and that sort of stuff and to do that I usually bring my trusty globe highly scientific instrument purchased off Amazon and this this gives you an idea so the picture there is is to scale and the first orbit is Leo and it says up to 20 kilometers now obviously objects don't orbit at five meters above the earth or 20 kilometers the typical rule for where space starts is 100 kilometers it's a point called the common line it varies a little bit but it's the point at which you have to travel so quickly to generate aerodynamic lift that you actually reach orbital speed anyway so it's a physical crossover point it varies with the atmosphere and that sort of stuff but it's a rule of thumb we use so Leo's about 100 kilometers to 2,000 kilometers there are big benefits to Leo okay if you want to take photos of things you want to be as close as possible so you want to get high resolution so you'd be nice nice and down low you also don't need much power the boss mentioned very small satellites you can get very small very low-power satellites in this area that can still have an effect to and from Earth you do have a small field of regard so the International Space Station orbits at about 400 kilometers altitude which is roughly Canberra Sydney as the crow flies which is again on my instrument here about the width of my thumb that is how high the International Space Station orbit Earth all right it's actually quite close what that means is that I can't see much of the earth from there okay so it's got a very small field of regard you don't have that huge access and low persistence satellites at that altitude orbit at about ninety minutes per orbit and they'll be you know overhead and gone in ten to twelve minutes okay so they don't stick around it also means you have to track them so if you want to do anything really fancy with them get a good lock you you need a dish that can track those or if you want to look at them and get a good a good hack on them you've got to be able to track them next is medium Earth orbit which goes from layout at 2,000 kilometers out to G oh yeah which is geosynchronous Earth orbit at 35,000 786 commonism good example of something in geo is GPS you're getting low resolution because you're 20 20,000 kilometers away medium persistence because your orbits at GPS altitude at least are about 12 hours say passing overhead a lot more slowly that also means you can have a much smaller constellation if you tried to put GPS at 2,000 kilometers you'd have you know hundreds of satellites in the constellation these guys get away with ya around 20 and you've got a larger field of regard okay you can see a lot more of the earth you can you know provide signal to a lot more of the earth and then finally geosynchronous orbit at 35,000 786 kilometers and at that altitude you orbit the Earth at the same rate that the Earth rotates okay so if you're on the equator you remain fixed above a certain point as youth goes around you've got really low resolution at that altitude and it takes a lot of power to get signals to and from but you've got a really large field of regard about 42 percent of the Earth's surface okay and the reason it's 42 percent instead of 50 percent is you can imagine from from way over here you start to glance the earth at about there so you don't get that whole hemisphere okay so you need three of those to provide whole of earth coverage sorry almost whole of Earth coverage very persistent like I said they hang in the sky above a fixed point and very little tracking required they do they do move a bit you can't get a it's a nature you can't get perfection and if you want to you know get a good lock you need to be able to track them but the average user can just set up their internet dish that you see on houses and set and forget okay so that's the great thing about Geo I mentioned that you don't get coverage of the whole earth from Geo so you don't get coverage of the poles okay so SATCOM at the South Pole is no good and at the North Pole is no good in countries like Canada and Russia have developed orbits which the Russians developed a Molnar orbit which basically goes down around the southern poles quite quickly but then has a lot of hang time as it goes up to its whole orbit up top you need two or three of those to provide persistent coverage of those North Pole areas geosynchronous satellites can't get that's space in a nutshell if you want to know a lot more do the defense space overview course look out for the Deaf grants words about three days if you want to know a lot lot more do the Masters offered by University of New South Wales so what is space that builds on real well space a lot of people is just the big event right it's the shuttle it's the moon landing see what I did there and it's it's small things like SATCOM to and from it's like they've got a very basic understanding to a lot of people it's it's this sort of thing in Star Wars is our greatest enemy when it comes to teaching people about space because so much of what happens in Star Wars is its garbage except the Ewoks spaces greatest trick is to hide itself it hides the complexity really really well we use space every single day for so so many things I mean everyone pretty much knows they're using space for this you'd be surprised how many people don't realize that GPS GPS supports their Fitbit or that other other smart watch and uber ok the complexity is hidden from us so people just don't know that they're using him these guys know they're using it precision agriculture the mining industry doing remote operations and very precise operations the efficiencies that these guys achieve by using space you know reaps rewards on the order of billions of dollars per year and everybody uses it for weather transport maritime air or the sort of thing all made far more efficient and an approachable by space and ATMs and things like our financial institutions the T in positioning navigation and timing which is provided by GPS is the Forgotten element in P and T all right everyone thinks that's for navigation it's for for getting around so that people know you know for us for precision weapons they know all about the locational aspects of it but the timing aspect provides secure comms ATMs internet connections and all that sort of thing make sure emergency services more efficient as I mentioned yeah everybody's got space in their hand it supports internet timing and you know without that we don't get YouTube and therefore cut videos imagine that so what if spacing that in the generic of the architectural level though there accepted three three segments the space segment the ground segment and the user segment the space segment is what you think it is okay so the satellites that are out there from Leo right up to Jo doing their job I've mentioned in the in the space segment they're the subjects okay as you divide as you design a space system what you are trying to do on earth whether it's communicate with earth observe something influence something whatever you're doing you must consider your subjects oh so really the space segment extends all the way to what it's doing either towards the ground or what it's receiving from the ground the ground segment is the section that controls the satellites okay you've got to keep them up there you've got to maintain their batteries you've got to maintain the system you've got to get data to and from make sure it's healthy maintain its orbit there's all these all these different functions under telemetry tracking and control just to keep the satellite worth meant to be and doing what it's meant to do the mission system can be either a part of what you're doing or it can be again hidden so at the the second space warning squadron for example we did the TT and C and we did the mission and we sent data out so we did missile warning and in space launch notification and we sent the data out though the user wasn't the user was a customer okay whereas with other other systems the user can be definitely part of the system GPS is a great example of what as well of where the the complexity is hidden they provide a set of standards to manufacturers of GPS chips around the world and they take those in a way they go and make whatever they want out of it okay the employment of GPS and position navigation time is only limited by the imagination I'll talk a bit more about that later but then you've got the user segment and the user segment is super diverse I apologize if your thing isn't represented on the slide there but you know you've got everything from from fast-moving aircraft using communications to command and control signals to to far more you know fast-moving tactical situations you've got maritime getting all over the globe you know vehicles and and personnel at all levels of size and shape and complexity trying to access space services right down to Army and Air Force accommodation behind so those those are meant to be a deployed headquarters in a Brussels all all using space systems to get their job done down to the military context and this is stolen from the US Department of Defense joint pub 314 Space Operations we get down to some very specific mission areas and there are three different you know broadly three different types of missions there's force enhancement these are the things that we do to make the joint force better smarter more efficient more lethal and these you know this here says we don't do space for space say okay you don't go to space if you don't need to if you can do something with an aircraft or a ship or a person on the ground do it with them okay because these systems are you know quite complex but a lot of things can be done better and smarter from space and here's some examples of what power so satellite communications we all know what they are and you think you know point-to-point voice point-to-point data UAV command and control all that sort of thing all of these global type of operations the things that enable us to be a global expeditionary force missile warning using those overhead persistent infrared systems I'll talk about those shortly you know to provide warning both at the strategic level so warnings of attacks against the homeland by great big missiles out of hostile nations right down to theater ballistic missiles and aircraft getting around the place anything them it's infrared yeah above certain thresholds is provided to the joint force obviously a very urgent mission intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance both tactical and strategic happens from space positioning navigation and timing I mentioned and finally environmental monitoring or weather okay whether it can be a deciding factor in battles we've seen time and time again over the years especially you know Middle East great big sandstorms can be picked up from space and can be a go/no-go decision for many many kinds of missions and if they are a go without that information you end up in the dirt you'll be glad that you had that information up front we need to these days we need to assure our access to space systems defensive space control is all those things that we do to prevent an adversary from taking away our access to these critical systems gates up might be finding and destroying GPS jammers it might be you know detecting their nefarious sections on orbit that we want to affect and you know taking actions to defend our satellites any of those things offensive space control is trying to deny anniversary that advantage okay and all of these effects happen in all five domains okay so you can use an aircraft to bomb a set satellite ground station and you are doing offensive space control if you're taking an adversary system okay so it doesn't just because it's a space mission doesn't have to mean it has to happen in space domain and in fact in most cases it won't one great big reason that is the worst thing that anyone can do in space Steve Henry's humble opinion is to blow something up okay the last thing you want is one satellite whether it's alive or dead or yours or theirs or whatever which is one piece of one object getting around it up to eight kilometers per second to become a thousand objects getting around at eight kilometers per second okay because they're all weapons they will all destroy anything in their path so offensive space controlled defensive space control think you know effects that are gonna cause debris and finally space situational awareness in every single domain we need situational awareness of what is going on in order to shape that domain and operate in it and space is no different all right so what is defense doing about it this is from the 2016 IRP and you can see that there's quite a range of things there but the total is around sorry you know if you take the high numbers its eleven point seven five billion and at the low end it's eight billion dollars that's 5% of the IIP we're spending 5% of the IIP on space and as the boss mentioned there aren't that many of us working on it you know we've got a we've got a team and I'll show you some shortly around the place but you can see here satellite imagery capability with a Geo SSA with us here at Air Force Headquarters P&T with our colleagues at JC G and satellite and terrestrial communications infrastructure Collins class submarine and maritime communications monitoring modernization being managed by Navy over fairly extensive time periods in most cases alright and this is this is who's putting all of those you know who are having an impact on all of that so you can see how the over the first height here and sorry this is fairly high level I'm not going down to the two you know one CCS operates at common and different units operates a calm and everybody has to maintain their PT so forgiving for sort of keeping this very high level and it's a mix of who's doing the operations and who's influencing the capability so space awareness here we are doing our space equational Anderson military missile warning capability today c2 and Operations supports for the Astraeus base Operations Center does day-to-day ops for DG air and DG air command ops are a mix of operations and race training sustained activities every single day from a toboggan door and one remote sensor unit down Adelaide operates space situational space situational awareness and missile warning capabilities as well as oth er jcg looking after communications and P&T capabilities VC do through military strategic plans looking after those future strategic plans okay it's you know a lot of this is happening out the future it's happening now but you know the the value of space is being realized the amount to which we rely upon space has been realized and adversaries are absolutely looking for ways to influence that army looking after their share of is re W and SATCOM capabilities navies had come over here AG o looking after GEOINT collection systems strategic policy division developing all the various policy and having external interactions DST doing a large amount of work on getting our understanding up so that as we trying develop capabilities we are supported by sound SNT and finally cio g operating the defense network operations center at HMAS harmon to provide all the SATCOM that that we need around the world so what are they working on all those people they're not just sitting around watching Star Wars these are some of the projects and you see it's color coded so I'll start with space situational awareness you can see here the different types of projects have capabilities at different levels so either in the in the ground segment or in a space segment and there are different elements of on the ground segment of users and mission systems so as I say for example we plan to have a variety of and I'll go into a lot of detail about these a variety of capabilities on the ground including a mission system and space-based capabilities missile warning for us is just ground-based okay so we have an operation center at a1 RSU at Edinburgh that that operates in cooperation with the US and we have ground stations that downlink through Australia as well SATCOM is going to be the complete package okay future sitcom programs and in fact even even past ones have looked after satellites the ground segment the user segments and the operations that the t t and c we haven't done TT and c before for SATCOM okay we've operated payloads so you talk to the payload itself back and forth communicate with this guy don't communicate with that guy but we've not operated a satellite before but that's what our next generation of ADF SATCOM is looking to do to own and operate satellites you may have heard of the wideband global SATCOM project started with six satellites it was a u.s. program they bought five of them we bought the sixth and it's a geosynchronous band of satellites to provide global SATCOM by buying the sixth with it which just happens to be located over the Pacific region we bought one sixth of a bandwidth of the entire network because we're do you know where do we send our deployed forces into the Pacific a little bit but the bulk of them around in the mirror at the moment and we don't you know we need to be able to communicate around there so the most of our WGS value we get out of satellites that we don't even own under a shared arrangement and on average about 80 percent of Defense SATCOM comes from commercial providers next is is our so a Geo developing satellites as you can see there in yellow and an operation system and they're going to operate the things from the ground and finally PMT for us for positioning navigation and timing will continue to rely on GPS for the foreseeable future so we just have to worry about making sure that our users and our systems are secure and operated well and acquired well I'm going to focus on SSA for the rest of the for the rest of talk I mean it's it's only a short talk and I couldn't cover all of those projects in depth so I'll try to get to the brief that you were given yeah that was advertised through the through the lens of SSA so SSA could be argued to start with over here persistent infrared sensors detecting the launch of a satellite and it'll let you know hey this is a satellite this is where it's going it's rocket bodies will sort of fly through this area some of those bits will become debris and it'll let you know that this launch has just put a satellite into Leonia or GA it'll let you know roughly where it's going to be so you can start engaging your ground sensors importantly missile warning space launches and missile launches both both going that where they need to go and clearly what we're trying to blow up air they say sensors over here in this case we want to know what's going on those missiles so the missile warning system provides notification of a launch where it's going when it expects to arrive so we can provide warnings to forces on the ground or do something about it so space launch heads-up and next thing is that you're going to get your mission system here telling you hey we need to get onto this area with some form of sensor so what we're going to acquire on the ground here is passive RF sensors which literally passive radio frequency just listen to what's going on in the environment active and passive radars active radar being the right other you all know and love that sends a signal out and receives it back passive radar uses signals of opportunity in environment so it might be a TV or a radio signal that it uses that's already there and it characterizes in senses that way so they are silent and finally active and passive optical sensors passive optical sensors that telescope yeah basically various sizes depending what you're trying to do active telescopes use a laser to illuminate the target great if you're trying to illuminate something that doesn't mind being illuminated but you know some people don't like their satellites being illuminated so you might want to use that capability judiciously I've got there the trade that you make between different kinds of sensors not all radars are wide field low resolution not all telescopes a narrow field and high resolution but you're making a trade between those different capabilities as you develop this network depending on what you want to see up and up in geo you know a lot of the strategic capabilities are the size of a bus down in leo some of the capabilities it can influence this are the size of a loaf of bread okay and in between all of those belting around it like I said about eight kilometers per second you've got debris things that can take out your satellite without even meaning it that you need to keep track of as well so why are we worried about these different areas obviously like I said you've got Cube sets so here's one target type just the little cube sights the companies the high schools the universities whoever's putting up a CubeSat to do an experiment becomes you know something that can influence your systems imaging satellites we want to know where else are and keep them safe we want to know where there's are and be able to you know deny them the access that they might like sorry I should have mentioned as well we're talking about sensors space-based both high and low don't have to look through the atmosphere and can get nice and close to the target I put mio that's where our global navigation satellite systems are so GNSS is that is that you know general term for you know systems like GPS Chinese Baidu the II use Galileo system and Russian GLONASS and there's there's several others we need to protect and look after and finally upper G are those strategic systems communications OPI are and and how important they are you know registers how important they are to look after finally human spaceflight if you you know if you believe the press if you believe what's going on humans going to be tourists you in space before too long there's going to be more and more of us up there we go to the moon we go to Mars we're going absolutely everywhere you know as with all other domains the safety of human life is generally one of the highest considerations so we need to be able to look after that so what are we looking for we're not just looking for where the dots are now okay in space you're in Keplerian space as opposed to here on earth where you're in Newtonian space the best example I can give of what that means is that you know humans humans evolved in the Newtonian space things I can move in right away from and chase other things that I care about so the tiger there is dangerous to me the tiger a hundred kilometers away I don't care about I probably don't even know about space is or can be the opposite okay if I'm in a geosynchronous circular orbit and there's a satellite fifty kilometers from me orbiting underneath my orbit okay it's actually not a concern if there's a satellite 70 thousand kilometers away on the other side of the planet but in 12 hours it's gonna cross my orbit and collide with me that's the satellite I need to be concerned with the one that seventy thousand kilometers away so it's not just knowing where the dots are now it's having a quality mission system that can not only coordinate all of these sensors but you know pass forward do that orbit determination figure out where things are going to be next okay also we're worried about maneuvers what changes in the picture why someone maneuvering there and if that satellite maneuvers there and this is my strategic communication satellite how long is it going to take them to get there what are they capable of doing then they get there do I need to worry it's getting ahead of that decision curve and finally other events so you've got maneuvers other events if something blows up why did it blow up was it just an old dead battery that just you know lost it and exploded was it a cool vision was it a nefarious acted someone target that satellite so all these things are things that we need to understand and finally I'll mention space weather ok space weather has a massive impact on our space-based capabilities especially is it as it arises or you know leaves alone the the ionosphere that gets charged up it can have huge effects on your SATCOM all of this will contribute to us being you know operational skeptical users of space-based systems so that instead of just bashing the SATCOM box on the side and wondering what's going on and calling a tech when you're out on operations trying to do a job you think we'll hang on I know that the adversary has capabilities it can do this I know that my system was working fine a second ago I'm gonna check out the technical side of it but I'm also gonna you know get in touch with the Intel or head clubs and say hey I've got something going on here so that we can start responding to those situations faster and that's what you know probably what these education events are about is letting people know that you're SATCOM you know or your all of your space-based systems it's not a sanctuary anymore ok space is a battlefield and it will be used against us in future conflict so onto the fix that I think we're in the brief what you know industry is first the defense white paper in 2016 led to the 2018 defense industrial capability plan and in the defense industrial capability plan we've got the sovereign industrial capability priorities you can see at the top their definition of the industry fig but then the bottom sovereign industrial capability priorities are capabilities that are critical to defense and must be developed or supported by Australian industry okay and SSA is one of those so under surveillance and intelligence data collection analysis dissemination and complex systems integration space situational awareness is called out specifically is something that we need to be doing here in Australia it's an important future capability for us to be able to do for ourselves the 2016 defense industry policy stone which came out at the same time as the white paper created the Center for defense industry capability which created two mechanisms to interact with industry the defense innovation hub and the defense in sorry and the next-generation technology is fine I had the amounts of money that you see there six forty and seven thirty million respectively you know this is this is a fair bit of cash over five years for these guys to accept bids from from industry of opportunities that they think exist to meet our industry polish polish statement and now industry capability plan and there's a few examples there of companies that we're working with SSA specifically we've got defense innovation hub contracts I think we're up around thirteen million dollars worth of contracts now for companies and universities you can see Western Sydney University there that are doing you know world leading space situational awareness they go out to conferences in the US you know obviously everybody thinks the US is the world lives for SSA and right now in terms of capability they probably are but in emerging capability in research and development of new systems Australia is right up there with them neuromorphic vision systems are biologically inspired sensors that can see satellites in new and exciting ways you know more technology is an Australian company developing the the their satellites right down to the smallest components themselves using 3d printing and other techniques developing small satellites and small satellites for SSO specifically and say breasts Aeronautics with with a mission system so you know and these these guys are working you know with the US and Britain u.s. Sabre participated recently in a training exercise over there they're leading the world they're doing great work for us and we will continue to engage them okay so one of our biggest industry engagement events is space fest space vessels named over beers but it's sort of stuck so we might have called it something more worried but yeah it's it's space fest now it's an annual trial slash demonstration I say trial slash demonstration what we're planning is that every every odd year so this year was one of those DST will design a full up trial plan they'll give sensors a target area target satellites all that sort of things they'll analyze their results and do all of that good SNT stuff that informs our capability decisions but every other year it might just be a demonstration where these companies get to come together and defense contribute to building that community and building that industry between industry universities the Australian Space Agency all these other actors who need to get together to make this stuff work it's had a massive impact already you know we have and it operated out at one release you can tell that from the red dirt there but we went out there we had mission system providers come out and work with a sensor guys to say hey what do you you know how does your data get output where do need to be informed where do you need the the other information to go and how can I get it into my system and apply for it you know for good not evil and you know it's it's been a phenomenal event and very popular great opportunity for engagement collaboration and like I said it's both senses and mission systems so the diagrams you can see there those are two 12 inch telescopes on a trailer a lot it's very very Australian in the way it's done so telescopes pop out of that little shell there do space situation when it's overnight and in a way we go and DST is achieving excellent results with those incorporation with Western Sydney University HF passive systems so using HF signals in the environment including from a th earth to see what they can get from reflected signals at silentium defences system call the alien spiders that's the passive RF system so just sits there as a network and picks up those signals in the environment again getting great results and finally this is a system from Curtin University cooperating with Lockheed Martin called Fire Opal you know I was going to see the power there because it seems gonna be remote it's not gonna necessarily gonna be sitting beside a power station or a power line inside that box there that you can see on top of the tripod is a Nick on digital SLR camera that's all it is that thing sits on auto and takes a 10 second exposure thinks about it for five seconds and it takes another 10 second exposure you get five three of those in a triangle on about a 500 kilometer baseline and all of a sudden you've got a very cheap and very capable space situational awareness system out in the middle of the Australian desert so these companies in universities really are thinking outside the box and achieving excellent SSA capabilities for us okay the Avalon air and space show 2019 you won't have seen it on any of the brochures but that's what it's really cool we heard the first day of a space park there in cooperation with Jericho so Jericho had their huge experiences and you know massive numbers of students and and and participants through and and tacked onto the side out in the Sun you guys had the aircon I think so is that right yeah so there we were in our tents with University of New South Wales Canberra silentium Defence uniball technologies Western Sydney University DST doing a demonstration for the public of what is being done right here in Australia you know today to support SMT thanks to Jericho team for coming up with some absolutely exceptional PR gear as well we're not capable of this sort of creativity but that's that's what the back of our tent looked like facing the flight line it was about what 20 metres long I think it was really quite impressive and an enabled space to sort of you know hit the Avalon airshow running and you know that's that's a tradition that I hope will continue in 2021 okay pick personnel so that's that's industry of code of industry and engagement that sort of thing I was going to cover two other fundamental inputs the capability personnel I think my humble opinion the space is about the joint gist capability its global it's everywhere everybody uses it to some degree whether they know it or not no matter where they are or what they're doing we've got about 60 space positions in the airforce right now a bunch of operators at one RSU I've got the oldest pocket there with about a dozen folks we've got a few of us working here at Air Force Headquarters but that is increasing quite quickly I mean you know you have positions as well and I'll give a shout-out to army he because they're doing a really good job as they develop one of their capabilities of sharing positions so they're trying to get bodies into the Australian Space Operations Center as is the Navy and Army are also opening up excellent opportunities for us in some of their SATCOM capabilities so really excellent collaboration going on there and hats off for those guys are leading the way on that mostly operators right now because we don't own and operate that many systems and plenty of civilians in the mix as well especially over the defense Network Operations Center it's mostly a civilian work force out there but we are absolutely bringing on other categories to help us do this stuff Intel O's and and analysts engineers and lawyers are all coming online some are online now but new positions are opening up next year and the boss mentioned there's there's two or three of us in the headquarters now we're getting an engineer next year we're getting a 50% of a lawyer that will share with the Australian Space Operations Center we're getting more operators out at edinburgh just to try and keep up with this growing capability initial training is probably a key activity right now we're doing what we to get involved in initial employment training p-mint and familiarize ations around the place so we're trying to see the capability technology management course so that the ACS see for engineers over the last couple of weeks University of New South Wales has opened up subjects as part of their undergraduate programs and they've opened up a master's degree as well two masters degrees one in the engineering and one in operations which until about the end of this year have looked exactly like two engineering degrees rebadged but to their great credit they've responded to our needs and next year the space operations course will include subjects like conflict and cooperation in space human technology interfaces and that sort of stuff so it really is becoming a very very applicable course to a lot of airspace operators as well the bottom line there is we need a space semi joint force and a joint savvy space force okay we don't do space the space sake we don't train up all these people to be massive nerds and do space stuff all the time not to contribute back to joint force capability that is the absolute point of all of this is to make the joint force more effective okay and space is part of that joint force moving forward the other thing here is collective training we need to train like we fight we don't know how to fight very well in a in a contested degraded and operationally limited space environment at this stage in future conflicts GPS will absolutely be jammed or they'll try to jamming SATCOM will absolutely be messed with satellites will be you know perhaps spun around or have other things put in front of them reeling like that we don't know okay but we're getting there and we need to figure out how those are going to impact our joint fight and you may have heard the term de without space let's do a day without space let's on talisman saber or something like that take away GPS for the day and see what the joint force does to me that's about as dumb as saying let's just not them let them use planes for the day okay it doesn't work that way we don't just pick up airships or people or tanks or whatever when the going gets tough okay we we take the fight you know to an adversary so day without space can that okay it's it's operating in a contested degraded and operationally limited space environment space often ends up in the too hard basket at the moment that's understandable because of the the lack of under yeah the lack of experts that we have in the lack of you know trained in qualified operators but that's changing as your spot grows to contribute space to join a a to AOC exercises and operations that sort of thing so we're getting there but the big challenge also is to include all stakeholders space is the greatest team fight right so it's not just Air Force Tonopah themselves or army or Navy or any military or any country or any department okay you know there's there's government systems that come on board the industry has to participate as well I mentioned earlier that a descent of SATCOM you know may come from commercial providers well how do they feel when we go to war are they going to switch off their access so that they don't get blown up how do they insurers feel about all that sort of thing we've walked these roads before right with merchant shipping and that sort of stuff we just need to apply some of this thinking to space as well all right so that's that's all I've got for it for the defense capability development part of it but I wouldn't be doing my job as a liaison officer if I didn't mention the Australian Space Agency quickly and get that message across as well so for those who don't know the agency kicked off in July last year so it's just over a year old and they started off with a budget of about 41 and million dollars over five years absolute peanuts I'm sure you'll agree in government terms 15 of that was for international engagement 26 was operating costs their budget now already is over 220 million dollars okay they've been kicking goals with both feet so they've got that budget and one of the big things for that budget is the 150 million dollars that the Prime Minister recently announced to corporate cooperate sorry with NASA and my dad called me the day that they announced it and said why are we giving 150 million dollars to NASA because he's from rural Victoria we need water we need agriculture we need all this other thing I said we're not giving 150 million dollars to NASA that 150 million dollars goes to Australian industry to cooperate with NASA now if you were going to the moon and you needed to mine water because water is mined on the moon because it's all frozen you got to go find it track it down and get it out to bring that back to a source in to extract it and to process and that sort of thing one of the first groups you're going to come to is the Australian mining industry believe it or not world leaders in remote operations okay so that 150 million dollars is for our mining industry our agricultural industry all of these people who are experts in remote operations you know Geoscience Australia might get some to help out with positioning infrastructure in that sort of thing that's a hundred and fifty million dollars that will go to Australian industry to put their stamp on the world map when it comes to space for missions to the Moon and Mars the strain space industry focus is on you know real-life okay we focus on those those five mission areas two types of access assurance and space situational awareness the australian spacing agencies job is to focus on the real-life impacts for australians they're not a mission focused agency nasa is a mission focused agency they launch rockets they do stuff okay the australian space agency is an industry focused agency their job is entirely about opening doors and getting things going so you know they always start their presentations talking about the impacts that they have on things that are important to australians agriculture and farming and mining that I mentioned earlier GPS and the blue dot the way that you use space in your lives every single day that the hidden blue dot and finally emergency services management take a look at the bushfires right now and imagine what you could do with highly accurate highly responsive infrared systems that could map those fire fronts really accurately and quickly so the purpose of the australian space agencies to transform and grow a globally respected australian space industry that lifts the broader economy inspires and improves the lives of stray Lien's all underpinned by strong national and international engagement ok so that's their that's their their headline and this is how they're going to do it so they released the australian civil space agency a month or two ago I think yeah I'm pretty sure it was August and here's what it does got four pillars internationally I want to open doors ok to NASA to the European Space Agency to the international space industry to the Lockheed Martin's and Boeing's of the world bringing them in to work with Australian companies the National is to increase capability by opening those doors and and mobilizing Australian universities and industry to get those things done we want to be a responsible space actor regulation risk and culture so our belief in a global rules-based order extends to space ok we want to be responsible is up there we want to do the right and to the extent possible we want to help ensure that others are doing the same thing so the Australian space agency is very very active with the UN and finally inspire build the future workforce starting in the high schools and the universities and working up through the workforce to get people going I should mention that the agency passed its first act three months after opening its doors okay and their process has been highly interactive with the industry so they originally passed or put forward I can see my badge reflecting on people's faces apologize for that put for the the new launches and returns act so the Australian launch industry is growing very quickly to to highly credible launch facility proposals are on the table equatorial launch Australia out of null and boy in the Northern Territory and southern launched a straight out of the air peninsula in South Australia for reasons I won't go into they both provide access to different types of orbits and above excellent locations for doing it they sent that out sorry I should mention in in cooperation with those launch facilities who just provide the place and the space to do it there are actual rocket companies developing black sky Gilmour and others developing the rockets to get stuff there you know they had huge input on all this and the agency was very responsive so it's a really positive and an interactive process the agency is not made up of space experts it's got two or three but it's made up of lawyers it's made up of entrepreneurs it's made up of government experts and these are all of the things that we need to enable the space bit experts here in Australia these are there seven civil space priorities and you'll note that the top four align very very naturally with what we want okay we want good pnt we want good Earth Observation for intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance sad comm and space situational awareness the others are supportive and very useful but you know the top four there are absolutely things we need what I mentioned is the positioning navigation and timing Geoscience Australia for the national positioning infrastructure capability received on the order of and I'm going to lowball the here I think it's about 200 million dollars but I think it's more over a set period to develop national positioning infrastructure capability in Australia their goal is to improve GPS accuracy in Australia which is about you can count on 10 metres really across the country they want to improve it to 10 centimeters everywhere in Australia and three centimeters within Wi-Fi coverage okay so that will be done using a variety of technologies both a space based augmentation system so extra satellites on orbit and they'll be designed to be in different orbits to GPS for various reasons but also the ground based technologies networks on the ground the desist your devices used in using GPS it's all about the downstream application so having ten centimeters or three centimeters might just be cool but what about three centimeter GPS accuracy in Sydney and the best example I've heard is what about for the vision impaired okay so you can't use GPS to get around if your vision impaired right now because you don't know if you're on the footpath or in front of the truck okay 10 meter accuracy is not good enough for you to get around but he mentioned three centimeter accuracy you'll know which which side of the concrete curb you're on okay so all of these downstream applications are improving the lives of Australians and just making life better and easier can you imagine your GPS actually working in the Sydney CBD how cool would that be that is all I've got I've left about 40 minutes for questions so got that I don't own that I wish I did if anybody sees it on eBay please do grab it I'll pay you for it that is that is it if anybody has any questions thank you

Channel: Air and Space Power Centre

Views: 1,315

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: ADF, RAAF, Space, Australian Space Agency, Air Power Development Centre, APDC

Id: wSSvBmEef_0

Length: 41min 22sec (2482 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 23 2019