AUSTRALIA’S renewed interest in space has been sparked by two recent developments. Its space industry is poised to enter a new era with the advent of cheap, lightweight satellites that can be sent into low orbit above the Earth. And in recent months a number of Russian companies have shown great interest in launching rockets from Australia, including a converted START intercontinental ballistic missile. This has caused a political furore with the Opposition spokesman on space matters, Grant Chapman, claiming that the deal is “shrouded in secrecy” and the responsible government minister, Chris Schacht, retorting that Chapman is guilty of “asinine reds-under-the-bed scare tactics”.
Things are moving fast. In the middle of May, a delegation of Russian space scientists and engineers will visit at least three places in Australia – Darwin, Woomera and the south coast of Western Australia – to judge their worth as sites to launch satellites into low Earth orbit, no more than 1000 kilometres above the Earth. Following an arrangement with the Australian Space Council, the government’s advisory body on space policy, the Russians will be expected to report their findings by the end of June.
And last Wednesday in Sydney, Kym Fullgrabe, a deputy director of the Australian Space Office, held a briefing on his recent trip to Russia. His office is the executive arm of the space council and handles the day to day implementation of space policy.
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In the audience to hear Fullgrabe were representatives from the Industry Reference Group which was formed two months ago so that industry could he kept informed of any negotiations with the Russians. Seven prominent Australian aerospace, telecommunications and engineering companies belong to the group – Auspace, Australian Defence Industries, AWA Defence Industries, Baulderstone-Hornibrook, British Aerospace Australia, Kinhill Engineering and Optus Communications. Also present were representatives from the Northern Territory, South Australia, and Western Australia, whose governments have all told the space council that their states are interested in being the site for a launch pad.
The new low Earth orbiting satellites (LEOs) are much smaller and lighter than satellites that are launched into geostationary orbit (about 36 000 kilometres above the equator). These so-called “litesats” weigh no more than one tonne, and in many cases considerably less, compared to a conventional satellite’s 4 tonnes. The cost of a LEO, which makes use of advances in electronic miniaturisation and new materials, may be as low as A$1 million compared with A$50 million for a large satellite.
An array of LEOs can provide communications over large areas, monitor the environment or explore for natural resources. Since these satellites drop out of orbit every three or four years, they will therefore need continual replacement. This provides a commercial opportunity for countries with good launch sites. The dilemma for Australia is that it has no site in operation to take advantage of the opportunity.
Another development is the sudden availability of Russian rockets and missiles for commercial purposes as a result of the end of the Cold War. Australia does not have a sufficiently large industrial base to build its own rockets. But it is a big landmass with plenty of open space where Russian rockets – or those from other countries – could be launched. If this were to happen, Australia would gain from the price that others paid to have their rockets launched and the impetus that such a facility would give to Australian industry. A launch site requires construction, constant maintenance, and services such as monitoring of satellites. Australian industry could also become more involved in the design and construction of satellites. It has shown recently that it can build payloads for the American space shuttle and for satellites (“One up, one down”, pages 9-10).
“We now have the greatest opportunity to become involved in space activities since the 1960s when the Woomera rocket range was in regular use,” says Chris Schacht, whose ministerial portfolio includes civilian space policy. “We are a sparsely populated continent surrounded by empty sea – that’s ideal for rocket launches,” he said. “In the north, equatorial orbits are possible and in the south, polar orbits. We have political stability, technical expertise, and a history of abiding by multilateral agreements and treaties. We will not allow sensitive technologies to be passed on to third parties.”
But the government’s critics believe that not enough money is being pumped into the space industry. Overseas experience shows that you don’t get a space industry without significant government support,” says Gordon Pike, chairman of the National Committee on Space Engineering for the Institution of Engineers. “But the government only puts in about A$6 million a year for the space office and its projects. There will always be companies like Auspace or British Aerospace Australia making instruments for someone else’s satellite, but that’s not an industry. We have no firm here that is big enough to kick-start the industry by itself.” Ian Tuohy from British Aerospace Australia says that at the moment those in the industry were competing with each other for crumbs. Canada, he said, invested A$200 million a year in its space programme.
Ted Stapinski, head of Auspace, said that it was a “disgrace” that Australia depended so much on satellite observations by other countries for information about its land and resources. Australia pays about $A600 million a year for this information and for access to TV signals and telecommunications, he said. “A country the size of Australia, and one that is so dependent on primary industries, should have its own satellites and its own sources of data.” Australia, according to Stapinski, may have left its run too late to enter the market generated by LEOs. “We suggested this four years ago,” he said. “Now launches are taking place in India, Pakistan and Indonesia. Taiwan and Korea are building their own satellites.”
But Schacht remains unmoved. Times have changed, he says. Industry has to take risks. “They want someone else to put up the money and be little more than a subcontractor themselves,” he said. “Industry has to be a prime developer. It has to get involved with such things as manufacturing components for LEOs, and developing ground stations to monitor satellites and systems for processing data.” Also, with the advent of LEOs, the demand to launch payloads was likely to exceed the supply of launch sites within three or four years. The government, Schacht said, could help by making things possible such as streamlining approval processes and dealing with foreign governments. But the Australian government would never subsidise the space industry ad infinitum.
Despite this apparent stand off between government and industry, Pike, Tuohy and Stapinski all see merit in the national space programme, a five-year plan to develop the industry, released last June by the Australian Space Council. The first of its kind in Australia, the plan lays out 40 ways of boosting the space industry. Some ideas, including a market survey, have already been implemented. The survey, undertaken by KPMG, an independent consultancy, showed a high demand for LEOs from five Asian countries – China, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. If Australia had a launch pad for LEOs, it would be well used by its northern neighbours, the survey suggests. The satellites would be used for such things as monitoring remote installations, messaging and paging services, and keeping track of trucks and other heavy equipment.
However, recent research by Michael Miller and others from the Institute for Telecommunications Research in Adelaide indicates that Australia will have to overcome one major problem before LEOs can be successfully used for communication in the region. In experiments with Auspace and CNES, the French space agency, the institute found that the VHF band used by LEOs in the Asia-Pacific area is very noisy – far worse than in Europe and North America. “The interference comes from things like paging systems, TV signals and taxis,” Miller said. “But it can be overcome by spreading the data signal over 1 megahertz.”
Another development that is part of the 5-year plan is a pilot project to transfer data electronically from remote sensing satellites to the end user such as farmers, pastoralists, or the mining industry. “If the pilot is successful, we hope that the private sector will run a network which would take the raw data, add value to it by processing the information, and then sell it to an end user,” said John Richards from the Australian Defence Force Academy who has been working on the pilot project with the space council. “There is no reason why such a service could not be adapted to Asia and marketed there by an Australian company.”
But the most dramatic, costly, and controversial proposal remains to be implemented – launching two rockets with “suitable” payloads from a site in Australia, showing the world that the country can carry out successful launches to low Earth orbit. Ideally, the payloads would be Australian satellites. The space office is currently considering proposals from six consortia to build a satellite – two will be funded for a total of A$5 million over three years. But there is no guarantee that the satellites will be ready in time for any demonstration launch which industry observers say will have to take place within two years if Australia is to show its mettle.
The 5-year plan says that an extra A$40 million over two years will be needed to make the launches possible. This money would be in addition to the space office budget and to the “seed money” for the satellites. “Unfortunately, there’s no sign of the government coming up with that sort of money,” says Pike. But, given government policy, industry may have to chip in as well, observers say.
According to Don Watts, chairman of the space council, the launches were included in the plan almost as an afterthought, but now they have assumed centre stage and will be the main thrust of the first review of the plan, due to be delivered to Schacht this month. “If we can’t achieve these launches, then it’s difficult to see that the council has a role,” Watts said.
At the moment, the space council is pinning its faith on striking a deal with the Russians. If this is successful, the cost of the two demonstration launches will be reduced because of the ready supply of Russian rockets. Late last year, Fullgrabe and Malcolm Farrow, executive director of the space office, visited America and Russia. They reported back that Russian companies, rather than American ones, were interested in launching rockets in Australia. One company, Energomash, which manufactures first-stage rocket engines in Russia, proposed working with Australian firms on the development of a rocket fuelled by methane and liquid oxygen. Such a rocket would emit fewer pollutants than conventional rockets. The company also proposed building rockets in Australia. This would boost Australian industry. Another company, STC Complex, which is converting ICBMs into rockets for peaceeful purposes, proposed that a converted START missile be used as a launch vehicle in Australia. Because the START rocket is fired from a mobile launch pad, it could be brought to Australia, fired, and the pad taken back to Russia. This would certainly demonstrate that Australia can launch satellites again, even if no permanent launch pad is built in the first instance.
Both Energomash and STC Complex will be sending scientists and engineers to be part of next month’s delegation that will evaluate Australia’s potential for launching Russian rockets.
The Russians are keen to deal with Australia for several reasons. Following the break up of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Russia is no longer guaranteed access to its traditional launch sites, such as Baikonur. Russia has been squabbling with Kazakhstan over annual fees for the use of this site which is near the Aral Sea. Australia could provide the long-term launch site the Russians are after.
Also, Russia has missiles that it has to get rid of under disarmament treaties with the US. The Russians want to sell them to companies or governments who want to launch a payload. By being used as a launch vehicle, Russia achieves two goals at the same time. The rockets will be destroyed when they re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere, but only after they have been used for commercial purposes.
A site near Darwin may prove attractive to the Russians. Because it is in northern Australia, 13° south of the equator, the location is suited to equatorial orbit. Baikonur, like all other launch sites in the former Soviet Union, is best suited to polar orbit. To achieve equatorial orbit from Baikonur, a rocket has to carry extra fuel which reduces the size of any payload.
Darwin has already been proposed as a launch site for LEOs by James Kennett, head of Kennett International Technology on Queensland’s Gold Coast. Kennett’s company has designed Kitcomm, a series of microsatellites – or tiny LEOs – each weighing 30 kilograms, which can be programmed to pick up signals about the condition of remote installations such as pipelines and power grids. A “constellation” of about 12 of these satellites, orbiting about 1 000 kilometres above the Earth, could provide a communications network covering some 30° north to about 30° south of the equator. Data will be downloaded in Darwin and then transferred by landline to the customer, for example, a power authority in any part of the world.
To launch the satellites, Kennett has been negotiating with PacAstro, an American company which has designed rockets called the PA-2 to carry microsatellites. But PacAstro still needs to raise A$50 million to build its rocket.
Pike believes that while Daiwin might be suitable as a launch site for the size of satellites proposed by Kernnett, it could not be developed into a launch complex of any great size. The Russians – or anybody else who investigates the site – will find a drawback to Darwin, he says. For an equatorial orbit it is best to launch to the east in the same direction as the Earth’s rotation. But east of Darwin is Kakadu National Park, a highly sensitive environmental area, and Weipa, a mining town of more than 20 000 people.
Woomera, another site to be visited by the Russians, also has problems according to Pike. “It was never intended as a commercial launch range. It’s in the wrong place for a start.” Its remote location, 500 kilometres northwest of Adelaide is well suited to sensitive military firings and the testing of missiles but Pike queries Woomera’s location for commercial use. It is not far enough north for equatorial orbits, he says, and polar launches to the south could head over the towns of Ceduna, Port Lincoln and Port Augusta.
Designers of launch sites do not like towns in the so-called “drop path” – the zone where discarded bits of rockets might land while reaching orbit. A site on the coast of South Australia or the south of Western Australia would be a better location, he believes.
But Woomera does have some advantages. Much of its infrastructure, including roads and a landing strip, is still there. Even some of the concrete launch pads used more than 30 years ago remain largely intact. And launches still take place, though the rockets, called sounding rockets, go straight up and down rather than reach orbit. Later this year NASA is planning to launch a sounding rocket from Woomera to observe the supernova, or exploding star, that was detected in the Large Magellanic Cloud in 1987.
Even if Woomera is not re-developed as a launch site, it could be used as a landing site for space vehicles or as a place to retrieve capsules parachuted back to Earth. Schacht, whose enthusiasm is fuelled in part because he is a senator from South Australia, is pushing for Woomera to become involved in Japanese plans for unmanned space flight.
HOPE, the Japanese spaceplane due to be launched in 2001, will need a runway to land on when it returns from space, much as the American space shuttle uses Edwards Air Force Base in California. Japan has no sites of its own, but Woomera, surrounded by wide open space, would be ideal, according to Schacht. And the Japanese are interested. Early next year, Alflex, a one-third scale model of the spaceplane, will be tested at Woomera. The 760-kilogram model will be lifted by helicopter to a height of 1500 metres before being dropped and guided electronically to a landing strip.
Pike believes that the best launch site in Australia is one that the Russians are not scheduled to visit – Cape York in northern Australia. “It is the best site we have for equatorial orbit,” he said. Down range to the east, there is nothing but open ocean until the coast of the Americas, 13 500 kilometres away. But so far this site has only been mentioned for launching large payloads into geo-stationary orbit 36 000 kilometres over the equator, not for LEOs. At this height, when travelling at the same speed as the rotation of the Earth, a satellite hovers at the same spot all the time. A network of three satellites can provide telecommunications around the world.
Pike was a member of one of five consortia which investigated Cape York in the late 1980s as the site for a major spaceport. “All the technical studies done on Cape York were favourable,” said Pike, “the problem was economic.” The cost for a spaceport is estimated to be A$1 billion. One of the consortia, headed by Robert Cooksey of the Euro-Pacific Capital Group of Brisbane, remains interested in developing Cape York and is still seeking investors.
Another consortium, Space Transportation Systems, also based in Brisbane, has turned its attention to two islands north of Papua New Guinea – Manus Island and Emirau. Both islands are within 2° of the equator. The PNG government is keen for the launch site to go ahead because of the foreign capital that such a project would attract. Again the cost will be about $A1 billion, but STS believes that the proximity to the equator will reduce the cost of geostationary launches compared with Cape York.
STS has signed an agreement with a number of Russians companies and government agencies to use the Proton rocket on any launch facility built in the South pacific region. The Russians are keen to launch their large rockets from a site as close as possible to the equator because the closer it is, the less fuel that has to be carried to achieve equatorial orbit and the bigger the payload. Using the Proton, Russian space officials say it will be possible to launch payloads weighing as much as 4 tonnes, twice the capacity that is possible at Baikonur.
Old hands like Pike worry that despite the activity, the space industry is still no certainty to get off the ground. “Many times over the last two decades we’ve had fine statements of intent but no action,” he says. “Most of us in the business are fairly sceptical until something solid happens.” But if a launch facility is built, it seems that there is at least one sure bet – the Russians will be involved.
Troisieàme ou quatrième?
THE debate still rages. Was Australia the third or fourth country in the world to launch its own satellite from its own soil? The Soviet Union and America were the first two. In 1965, from its rocket range at Hammaguir in North Africa, France launched its first satellite called Asterix. Two years later on 29 November 1967, Australia’s first satellite, Wresat, lifted off from Woomera in South Australia on board a US rocket. The argument against France being third has always centred around the launch taking place on colonial territory in what was then the French Sahara rather than on French soil. But regardless of the pecking order, Australia was one of the first involved in the business of launch satellites.