Woomera Interim Report Released

On the 5th of November, the Australian Government Review of the Woomera Prohibited Area Interim Report was Released, and can be found here.

The report examines the access rights of the different stakeholders in Woomera, and if the management could be improved for all parties, in particular, improving mining access to the Woomera Prohibited Area, that has the potential to exploit large mineral reserves.

The Review was commissioned by the Government in May 2010, and was conducted by Dr Allan Hawke AC.

The review consulted with many parties, in particular Defence, the South Australian Government and the mining industry, and even the Space Policy Unit.

Whilst Woomera is seen as one of Australia’s best defence and aerospace assents due to the incredibly large testing range and significant Space heritage, the Space Policy Unit indicated “it is not aware of any specific civil or commercial space activities, national, or international with definite plans that involve the WPA”, whilst acknowledging the activities of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, the University of Queensland and the South Australian Space School at Woomera.

The Report states:

“The WPA attracts civil and commercial space activity because of its large size and remote location. The Commonwealth Government acknowledges, however, that the economic benefits of this usage is limited and need only remain a priority to the extent it is compatible with other uses of the WPA."

Hopefully, the increased mining access to Woomera will work nicely side-by-side with any future Space Activities.

The Interim Report is available at www.defence.gov.au/woomerareview, and anyone interested in submitting for the final report can do so before the 3rd of December 2010.

National Space Camp Woomera Applications Open

Applications for the South Australian Space School's National Space Camp Woomera 2010 are now open. The Space camp is a residential conference for year 11 students from around Australia, with 40 students selected to participate.

The conference will be held from the 30th of Sept to the 4th of October 2010 in both Adelaide and Woomera.

For further information, head here.

Hayabusa’s Spectacular Return

Hayabusa lights up the outback sky on return (JAXA)

Right on schedule, at 11:51pm on June 13, the Hayabusa spacecraft put on a spectacular skyshow on its return to the Woomera Prohibited Area in the South Australian outback.

The spacecraft separated from its capsule as planned, and as you can see in the video, the spacecraft broke apart and burnt up on re-entry, leaving the capsule to float gently down on its parachute for a soft landing. Furthermore, the capsule then broadcast its location back to the search team, allowing them to find it by helicopter reasonably quickly in the vast Woomera test range.

 Hayabusa and parachute when first spotted (JAXA)

The capsule has been deemed “intact”, and will now be taken back to Japan to the eager scientists who will now open it to determine if any Asteroid dust or gas was captured.

 Hayabusa up close when being recovered (JAXA)

The original video from the NASA tracking aircraft can be found here.

The countdown to Hayabusa continues

If all goes well, on sunday night at about 11:30pm local time, the Hayabusa spacecraft will be floating gently down to Woomera on its parachute that will deploy at about 10km altitude.

As I've blogged on before, the Hayabusa spacecraft will also hopefully contain some dust samples from the asteroid Itokawa, after overcoming a series of major problems to limp back to Earth, in what could be described as simply amazing engineering on behalf of the JAXA engineers.

Both Japan and NASA will be sending down sensitive tracking equipment to track the spacecraft on reentry, with scientists including Professor Trevor Ireland from the Australian National University eagerly awaiting to see the results.

For those wanting to follow the mission live, the Hayabusa site can be found here.

Hayabusa Return Interactive Event

To correspond with the Hayabusa spacecraft return to Earth at Woomera on the 13th of June, the Hayabusa project manager, Dr Junichiro Kawaguchi, and Australian Scientist Dr. Trevor Ireland, will be participating in an Interactive Event on the 6th of June. The even will be hosted by Questacon in Canberra, as well as The Victorian Space Science Education Centre (VSSEC) in Melbourne.

For full details about how to attend (tickets are free), head here.

JAXA's Hayabusa spacecraft to land at Woomera

The Japanese Space Agency (JAXA)'s Hayabusa spacecraft will be landing in the Woomera Prohibited Area in South Australia in June. In doing so, the Hayabusa spacecraft will be the first spacecraft to perform an Asteroid sample return mission.

Launched in May of 2003, the spacecraft met up with the Itokawa asteroid in 2005. Whilst its sample mission was not fully successful, it is highly likely that some asteroid material has entered into the sample chamber, and will be able to be analysed upon landing.

Australia will be playing a significant role in assisting JAXA in the spacecraft landing and recovery, particularly through the Woomera range support activities. I'd also be interested to find out which government departments are actually involved in the coordination - clearly Innovation and Defence, but who is doing what?

Both the Innovation Minister Kim Carr, and Defence Minister John Faulkner issued a joint ministerial media release on the Hayabusa landing which can be found here.

Another good step in the ever increasing pace of Australian Space activities.

Good luck to everyone involved in the landing!

Hypersonic Success

(Photo: DSTO)

The Hypersonic International Flight Research Experimentation (HIFiRE) team have announced that their 2nd flight test on the 22nd of March has been successful at Woomera in the South Australian Outback.

The test took the flight vehicle into space to an altitude of 200km, before it dived back into the earths atmosphere at a hypersonic speed greater than Mach-5, or 5830km/h. The vehicle itself crashed into the ground 10 minutes after launch, with valuable flight and testing data transmitted to the ground station.

The test flight is the 2nd of 10 planned for the HIFiRE program, which is a joint research program between the Defence Science Technology Organisation (DSTO) and the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).