Vision from space could be beamed into Adelaide in real time, space boss says
The Space Agency will move into Lot Fourteen soon – and in just a few years from now it should be streaming missions live from the Moon or even Mars.
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Imagine a live feed from Mars being beamed into North Terrace. From the planned Mission Control and Space Discovery Centre complex you could watch the International Space Station, maybe the next Moon landing, and one day watch humans on the Red Planet.
That’s just one of Australian Space Agency head Megan Clark’s visions.
Her favourite mission, though, is getting kids excited about science, technology, engineering and maths by talking about space.
“The chance to give Australian kids a job in this sector – nothing excites me more,” she said on Thursday.
The Agency will move into its headquarters in Lot Fourteen soon, and planning has begun for Mission Control and the Space Discovery Centre.
“Our vision is that we would love to have live feed from the ISS, from what we’re doing on the Moon and ultimately what we’re doing on Mars,” she said.
“In real time.”
Dr Clark is giving a keynote address on “Australia’s race for space” at a Committee for Economic development of Australia in Adelaide on Friday.
She will update the crowd on the “seriously cool things” the Agency is doing such as signing agreements with other nations, building a national capability and a regulatory framework, and “inspiring a whole new generation to train and to be the workforce of this future sector in the Australian economy”.
The Federal Government wants space to spin off 20,000 jobs and triple its economic output to $12 billion.
Unlike government-funded behemoths such as NASA, the Australian Space Agency is the most commercial setup in the world, existing to coordinate the civil space sector. Much of that sector is working in small satellites that orbit the Earth doing things such as helping humans track bushfires, improving communication, sustaining GPS, and so on.
Beyond that, though, Australia has a chance to be part of grander missions, including the Moon to Mars mission.
NASA plans to put the first woman on the Moon within five years, and the Moon landing is a jump off point to travel on to Mars.
All of which will lead Dr Clark to tell the CEDA audience about water.
These crewed missions will need water both for human survival and because water atoms can be split into hydrogen and oxygen, which in turn can fuel spacecraft.
“There’s a possibility that there’s water below the surface on the Moon. We already know that on Mars there’s very salty water in subsurface aquifers,” Dr Clark said.
“You might not have thought about it, but if we go back to the Moon and on to Mars… we’d better start learning a bit about it.”
The Moon landing is planned for 2024.
“And that’s not that far away,” Dr Clark said.
