Australia – US Space Situational Awareness Partnership Statement of Principles

Following on from last the recent agreements between Australia and the United States of America, here is the text for the Statement of Principles. (Source: Minister for Defence website)

AUSTRALIAN-UNITED STATES SPACE SITUATIONAL AWARENESS PARTNERSHIP

Statement of Principles

• The Space Situational Awareness Partnership builds on the long history of close defense space cooperation between Australia and the United States that has formed a cornerstone of our alliance for over four decades.
• Our two Governments will work together in the spirit of cooperation on the space situational awareness partnership for the mutual benefit of our countries’ national security.
• Recognizing the importance of space situational awareness to protect our national interests, and support global peace and security, Australia and the United States will investigate the potential for jointly establishing and operating space situational awareness facilities in Australia to support the United States space surveillance network and to support the development of Australia’s space situational awareness and mission assurance capability.
• Understanding the vital role of space surveillance to protect our countries’ national interests, Australia and the United States will share the necessary space situational awareness information and technical data, and recognize each country’s space situational awareness priorities.
• In making use of the space situational awareness joint facilities, each government will respect the sovereignty and respective laws of the other.
• In recognition of Australian sovereignty, the contemplated space situational awareness joint facilities will operate in a manner that ensures the Australian Government has full knowledge of, and concurs with, any activities being undertaken in, through or from Australian territory.
• In the construction and operation of any space situational awareness joint facility, each Government will comply with its relevant laws and regulations.
• This statement of principles will form the basis for establishing the space situational awareness partnership and our nations’ expanded defense space cooperation activities.

For Australia                                                                                For the United States

The Hon Stephen Smith                                                                  Dr. Robert M. Gates

Minister for Defence                                                  United States Secretary of Defense

SpaceBoomerang gets a mention on Aviation Week

Great to See that SpaceBoomerang got a mention in Michael A. Taverna’s Aviation Week article “Australia, U.S. Join on Space Situational Awareness”.

Australia and the United States sign a Civil Space Cooperation Framework Agreement

During a meeting between Australian and United States Government Officials in Washington DC on the 26th and 27th of October, Australia and the United Sates signed a joint "Statement on Bilateral Cooperation in the Civil Use of GPS and Civil Space Activities", reinforcing and expanding previous agreements.

Within the meeting, officials reviewed the progress achieved so far on the "Joint Delegation Statement on Cooperation in the Civil Use of GPS and Space-Based Positioning Navigation and Timing (PNT) Systems and Applications" signed in April 2007.

According to the announcement: "The first day's discussion covered the broad and growing use of the U.S. Global Positioning system (GPS) and its augmentations in the air transport field, the installation of ground monitoring stations that will improve performance of current and emerging Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and applications for GPS including national spatial reference systems, weather forecasting, climate observation, space weather, and important economic uses of GPS time. The second day's discussion focused on U.S. and Australian space policy developments, long term sustainability of space activities and bilateral space science cooperation."

The announcement goes on to say "The framework will encompass collaboration on important space applications such as satellite-based land and sea remote sensing, climate change research and meteorology, and space-based PNT, as well as opportunities for early discussions on new systems and future civil space-related missions under development." which is very much in line with the Australian Space Policy Unit's current interests.

“Civil space infrastructure is critical to all Australians. Every day, we use civil space systems for applications ranging from GPS navigation, to land and sea remote sensing. This agreement formalises Australia’s continued access,” said Innovation Minister Senator Kim Carr (or Minister for Space as I like to call him).

The US and Australia will review cooperative civil space related activities between the countries anually, and engage in perioudic consultation to pursue the goals of the proposed core framework.

The statement can be found here, with the Media Release found here.

This is the second major space announcement within a few days between Australia and the United States, one military, one civilian. It is a strong sign of the current US administration's goal to engage with more international partners in Space, and such tight cooperation is likely to have a large influence on the Australian Space Policy under development.

AUSMIN Announces Space Cooperation between the United States and Australia

As discussed in my previous article Space Surveillance Site to be Built in Western Australia, as part of the 25th Australia-United States Ministerial Conultations on the 8th of November 2010, Minister for Australian Foreign Affairs Kevin Rudd, Australian Minister for Defence Stephen Smith, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, have discussed the possibility of cooperation in Space Surveillance and Security.

In a sign of the increasing importance of Space in Australia - the "Joint Statement on Space Security" indicates "Australia and the United States both recognise that space systems have become critical national infrastructure."

"Australia intends to work with the United States to progress efforts to prevent long-lived debris-creating behaviour, and develop and implement transparency and confidence-building measures for enhanced stability and safety in space activities."

During the AUSMIN, Australian Defence Minister Smith and Defence Secretary Gates signed a "Space Situational Awareness Partnership Statement of Principles". This is also seen as a strengthening of Australia's already close relationship with U.S. Defence on issues of Space.

In practice, the US and Australia are considering a joint Space Surveillance facility which is likely to be built at the Harold E. Holt communications base at Exmouth in Western Australia. At the moment, it is likely that the facility would use Radar technologies, but may also include a component of Optical tracking. Australia is actually very well positioned, as there are likely some technology parallels with the Jindallee Over the Horizon Radar Network (JORN), and even more importantly, the technology that EOS has been working on would be an obvious candidate for development and inclusion.

What this will mean is the US will get much better tracking of Space objects in the Southern Hemisphere - currently underserved within the Space Surveillance field. Secondly, better tracking will in theory lead to fewer collisions in space, as well as better transparency of space objects internationally. Thirdly, it will give Australia a major boost in Space Survellance knowledge, as well as major developments in both technology and personnely related to Space. If such a facility is built, Australian defence will be significantly boosting their space capabilities, a good sign for the future.

In an interesting footnote, the joint statement includes " Complementing this work, Australia and the United States also noted the ongoing discussions on developing an Australia-United States Civil Space Cooperation Framework Agreement to take the long-standing civil space cooperation between the two countries to a higher level, strengthen collaboration and provide opportunities for early discussions on new developments. Australia and the United States reaffirmed their commitment to intensify space cooperation across a range of common interests and decided to review progress in this field at AUSMIN 2011."

Perhaps this is tied together with the current Australian Space Policy that is under development, or a broader cooperation framework with the US on Space. I guess we'll have to wait and see on that one.

More information about AUSMIN and the recent announcements can be found here.

Optus looking for a Spacecraft Systems Engineer and Spacecraft Payload Engineer

 
Optus, Australia's leading satellite communications company is currently advertising for both a Spacecraft Systems Engineer and a Spacecraft Payload Engineer.

Both positions are full time, based out of Optus' Macquarie Park campus in Sydney, and appear to be aimed at a graduate or early career candidate. 

For those interested, head over to the Optus Website or my links above.

Hughes Network Systems Demonstrates Rural Satellite Broadband Capabilities

According to iTWire, Hughes Network Systems claims to have demonstrated a 16 Mbps link to a HN9400 Ka-/Ku-band broadband satellite terminal using satellite in Australia. In doing so, they have demonstrated that their satellite terminal is capable of supporting web browsing, streaming video, voice and videoconferencing applications simultaneously.

According to Hughes "The live demonstrations featured aggregate satellite Internet usage of 16Mbps and in addition, included simultaneous downloading from the Web of video clips, photos, software updates, and music; downloading streaming movies; VoIP; and point-to-point video conferencing - all delivered over the HN9400, a high-capacity, dual Ka-/Ku-band satellite platform."

Hughes is believed to be one of the companies that are competing to with the NBNCo contract to build and launch two Ka band geostationary satellites to provide broadband to the bush, and earlier this year opened an Australian Subsidiary.


It is believed that more will be known about the Satellite tender within the next few weeks.

Space Surveillance Site to be Built in Western Australia

During the upcoming visit of both US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and US Defence Secretary Robert Gates scheduled for next week, a brand new multi-million dollar Space Surveillance facility will be built in Western Australia by the US according to the Fairfax newspapers.

The project, which was planned to be announced during US President Barack Obama's cancelled trip to Australia in June, will likely be built at the Harold E Holt Naval communications station in Exmouth, Western Australia. 

As highlighted in the most recent Defence White Paper, Australian military operations are now heavily reliant on space capabilities, and Space Situational Awareness and Mission Assurance was listed as one of the emerging capability priorities.

The facility is a natural extension of the US Space Surveillance capabilities, but will likely provide Australia with key information on  the protection of our vital space infrastructure, the space capabilities of other nations, as well as the ever increasing space debris problem. 

This continues the rise of importance in Australia of the Space industry, and it is likely that Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Defence Minister Stephen Smith will be on hand for the announcement.