The South Australian Government has launched its Space Sector Strategy aimed at driving the state’s contribution to the Australian Space Agency goal of tripling the size of the nation’s domestic space industry to $12 billion by 2030.
Launching the strategy, SA Premier Steven Marshall said the state would focus its activities in space industry and research to propel its growth in the sector and contribute to the national agenda.
“South Australia is unequivocally the home of space and this strategy sets a framework for South Australia to reach for the stars,” Premier Marshall added.
“Businesses in the space sector will be creating thousands of job opportunities for South Australians over the next decade which is great for our economy.
“Our vision for growth is simple – by 2030, South Australia will be designing, manufacturing, launching, and operating SmallSats (small satellites) to deliver actionable, space-derived intelligence for sovereign Australian missions – creating hundreds of jobs in the process.”
Drafted in collaboration with industry, the South Australia Growth State Space Sector Strategy is a crucial part of South Australia’s broader Growth State Strategy – a partnership between the South Australian Government and industry designed to accelerate the state’s economy through business expansion and innovation.
The strategy is based on three pillars for growth of the state’s space ecosystem, dedicated to supporting the national strategy, cultivating South Australia as a centre-of-gravity for Australia’s expanding space activities, and capitalising on the opportunities of NewSpace.
South Australian Space Industry Centre (SASIC) Chief Executive Richard Price said this means a focus on launch into accessible lower Earth orbits, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to exploit space-derived data, technological advances to develop small satellites, expanding a skilled workforce, and building on the state’s innovation ecosystem.
“While traditional space-related services fundamentally underpin our way of life on Earth and deliver a large proportion of the revenue attributed to the space sector, there are phenomenal opportunities for the new breed of space-related services that are unencumbered by legacy practice,” he continued.
“These NewSpace-enabled products and services have strong potential to improve the productivity and competitiveness of virtually every sector of the broader economy, as well as making a direct contribution to growth in South Australia.”
“We are committed to getting behind new entrants in the space industry and supporting domestic and international companies to develop and grow innovative and disruptive ideas contributing to our space sector.”
