South Australia on launch pad for astronomical benefits

In the near future, South Australia will literally be launching rockets.

Lloyd Damp is the CEO of Southern Launch, which is building a rocket launch pad on the remote Eyre Peninsula for the launch of commercial micro satellites. Picture: Kelly Barnes

Adelaide’s rocket man, aerospace engineer Lloyd Damp, is set to give the South Australian economy a very welcome blast with the construction of a launch pad on the remote Eyre Peninsula enabling companies here and overseas to shoot low-cost satellites into low-Earth orbit.

With the Morrison government having committed $150m to space exploration and Adelaide being selected as home to the Nat­ional Space Agency, a company called Southern Launch has emerged as one of the first tangible examples of how local jobs will be created and businesses supported in the space economy.

Amid talk from NASA of landing a man on Mars, Mr Damp said the commercial future of space in Australia was smaller, more practical and local, with his company set to launch affordable micro satellites that will have immediate practical applications for Australian industry and research.

Agriculture will be one of the biggest beneficiaries, letting farmers use satellites to monitor stock and manage feed and water; so too will medical research, with satellites used to examine the effect of drugs on cells in zero gravity. The satellites will also be used to monitor fish stocks, shipping movements, and to identify and track bushfires.

“It’s actually easier to talk on terms of what you can’t do with satellites than what you can do with satellites,” Mr Damp told The Weekend Australian. “The applications are almost endless and with the new affordability provided there are so many exciting opportunities across a range of industries, some of which haven’t even been identified yet.”

Mr Damp, who started Southern Launch in 2017, works from the University of Adelaide’s ThinkLab premises in the CBD, a collaborative work space for like-minded entrepreneurs just over the road from Lot Fourteen, the business start-up centre at the old Royal Adelaide Hospital Site being championed by Premier Steven Marshall as the engine room of the new economy.

Mr Damp has identified remote farming land near what is known as Whalers Way, a tourist centre that preserves the state’s 19th-century whaling industry heritage, as where the first rocket launch will be conducted next year.

The launches will be done incrementally, starting by firing a roughly 3m-long rocket into what Mr Damp calls “the start of space”, an altitude of 100km, at a velocity of 1.5km a second or five times the speed of sound.

The launches will then increase in speed and height towards orbital level, an altitude of between 160km and 2000km, under which objects suffer orbital decay and fall back to Earth.

Mr Damp said bigger, vastly more expensive commercial satellites such as those used by the NBN and Foxtel revolved around the equator and cost as much as $500m a piece, whereas the new generation cube-sats could be carried into low orbit on a north-south polar axis. “While not inexpensive, this is the low-cost end of rocketry to perform commercial functions.”

The plan has the enthusiastic support of Mr Marshall, who has designated the Eyre Peninsula launch site a Major State Project in the hope it can help propel the SA economy into a new post-manufacturing stratosphere.

“This means that in the near future, we, in South Australia, will literally be launching rockets. What a coup for our state. I think we all have stars in our eyes,” he said.

“We are now, without a doubt, the space capital of the nat­ion. Young people from across the state have the opportunity to seize incredible jobs across the sector, right here in SA.”

Mr Marshall said SA had not just secured the headquarters of the Australian Space Agency and its Mission Control Centre but also SmartSat CRC, a consortium of industry and research organisations developing space technologies, and the Space Discovery Centre to educate young Australians about astronomy and emerging space industries.

“There’s an ambition to triple the size of Australia’s space economy by 2030, and Lot Fourteen on North Terrace is going to play a critical role in achieving this.

“The Australian Space Agency has just signed an MOU with NASA to aid in their mission to get back to the moon by 2024. They will also work towards a mission to Mars in future. Adelaide is going to be at the heart of this monumental project.”

The Premier will host a Space Forum in Adelaide next Monday that will be attended by several of the new businesses that are identifying new opportunities for the private sector in space.