SpAARC ignites Australia’s space sector

By Andrew Curran, Correspondent, MySecurity Media

The still young Australian space sector is small but already shows signs of punching above its weight. Hundreds of companies, big and small, are establishing space programs in Australia, tapping into a growing skill base, some unique and valuable capabilities, and the increasing government and institutional interest in space.

Fugro, a geo-data company, provides geological analysis from most places on Earth - above and below the waterline. Fugro is also an example of a company increasingly interested in expanding their capabilities into space.

Last year, after winning funding from the Australian Space Agency (ASA) and Western Australia Government, Fugro confirmed Perth as the primary site for its global robotics and remote operations via the establishment of the Australian Space Automation, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Control Complex (SpAARC).

“The remote operation of autonomous and robotic systems in space is a huge area of opportunity for Australian industry, and SpAARC will be critical to us realising that opportunity,” said the Head of the Australian Space Agency, Enrico Palermo.

From its time prospecting some of the Earth’s more challenging underwater and above water terrain, Fugro already has well established remote operations capabilities.

Western Australia is home to some of the world’s biggest and most isolated mining and resource companies, who are also keen users of and have considerable expertise in remote operations. It makes Perth a bit of a hotbed for remote operations research and development.

Manned missions to the Moon and beyond capture plenty of headlines, but in reality, manned space missions are dangerous and very expensive. Nearly all ventures into space involved unmanned spacecraft, with the exploration of other planets and moons using remote operations technology – and Australia’s longstanding expertise in this field gives the country’s embryonic space sector a key competitive advantage. That’s something companies like Fugro, via SpAARC, are keen to benefit from.

“If we go back to 2015, we were a fairly traditional oil and gas services contractor in Australia,” says Samuel Forbes, Fugro’s SpAARC Director. “We started to solve a number of complex problems that overlap in other industries that overlap the mining sector. They overlap with the military and unbeknownst to us, there was an interesting overlap with the space sector. The nice thing for us is this all lining up with the emerging Australian space sector – the creation of the Australian space industry.

We’re really interested in building a capability that can be exploited across multiple robotic platforms – space is simply another operating domain, and we’re working on that challenge now.”

This is not just rhetoric from the SpAARC Director. He’s brought some big guns with years of experience in the space sector onboard. One of those people is Dawn McIntosh. Ms McIntosh started at Fugro Australia in October 2021 as their Space Systems Director. Her arrival was somewhat of a coup for Fugro, having worked at NASA for more than 20 years, most recently as Associate Division Chief of Mission Systems and the BioSentinel Project Manager.

It is a big leap from NASA to Perth. Fugro’s new Space Systems Director says it was a combination of factors that attracted her. She liked that Fugro wanted to make space a key part of their portfolio rather than a side project.

Australia’s ground floor position in the space industry also appealed. The jump from a legacy organisation like NASA to a place where the space industry was relatively small but had enormous potential was attractive.

“Space is still brand new in Australia,” Ms McIntosh says. “That’s interesting, coming from NASA, which has a lot of structure and organisation around it; it’s interesting to think about space from the ground floor and what that looks like, and that was really appealing to me.”

A flagship project for SpAARC is participating in NASA’s return to the Moon. SpAARC is heavily vested in the Australian Government’s Trailblazer program to put a rover on the Moon in 2026. Dawn McIntosh says projects like this are fun and exciting to design, but there are millions of little steps along to way to that happening, which she refers to as the non-space side of space.

Getting that rover to the Moon will be a collaborative effort that will involve many businesses, universities, and people with an interest in space. Harnessing, nurturing, and embedding this collective pool of talent into the space industry is what Ms McIntosh calls laying a “foundation” for the Australian space industry and is something she finds herself enjoying doing.

Because of programs like Trailblazer, Ms McIntosh says the Australian space industry will learn how to run complex space missions from Earth, and each one will be run a little bit better than the last.

“How we continue to grow and innovate in that domain is very interesting to me,” she said. “In the next few years, we’re going to see a lot more missions to the Moon. We’re going to the South Pole (of the Moon) – something like four or five plus missions are heading specifically there. I think that based on the outcomes of these early missions, there will be a large growth in space missions. I’m specifically thinking of lunar missions, but we’ve got Mars around the corner and then other planetary bodies that could be on the list."

I really want SpAARC to be a central player in how that plays out and how we execute that in Australia. I think we’re set up to do so, and it makes sense for SpAARC to be that base and foundation for these upcoming missions.”

Dawn McIntosh also believes the Australian space sector is on the cusp of something big. She expects substantial changes and progress in the global space sector over the next two or three years. Fugro’s Space Systems Director is keen to see how that plays out in Australia.

“I think the growth rate (of the Australian space sector) is going to increase dramatically.”