Australia should build its own network of Earth observation satellites to reduce reliance on foreign satellite data that could be compromised by environmental or geopolitical stressors, scientists say.
The recommendation is included in a national 10-year plan for Australian space science, launched on Thursday by the Australian Academy of Science.
Prof Stuart Phinn, director of the Remote Sensing Research Centre at the University of Queensland, said Earth observation satellites were important for weather forecasting and predicting and responding to natural disasters such as the recent volcano eruption in Tonga.
“All of our crop production, our food production and grazing also depends on information from satellites for a range of purposes. Our defence forces in their operational planning and responses … depend on information from satellite systems,” Phinn said at a media briefing.
The field of space science also has applications in environmental management and GPS navigation and timing technologies.
Presently, Australia relies on Japanese geostationary satellites for weather information, as well as data from US and European Space Agency satellites, Phinn said.
According to the national plan, “there is no guarantee all necessary data sources will always be freely available … This imposes a sovereign risk, especially if Australia is regarded as an unequal contributor to the global [Earth observation] community.”
Building and operating satellites locally would ensure Australia’s independence, Phinn said, adding: “We can contribute back globally as well.”
The decadal plan also recommends establishing a national program of space weather research.
It warns that Australia’s current capacity “provides around a one-hour warning of major space weather events” that could knock out global aviation and communication.
Solar flares – intense explosions in the sun’s atmosphere – can trigger magnetic storms and disrupt satellites, radio communications and radar operations.
Emeritus Prof Fred Menk, chair of the AAS’s national committee for space and radio science, said: “I can guarantee that at some point, there’ll be a catastrophic space weather event that will fundamentally damage our infrastructure.
“I can’t tell you if that’s going to be next week or in 100 years, and that is because we don’t have the science which allows us to make those sort of predictions accurately.”
“What we can do is we can grow our science capability in Australia,” Menk said.
The plan also recommends establishing space science as a national research priority, and investment in an ongoing national space program.
Menk predicted there would be about 100 missions to the moon in the next decade, as well as other planetary bodies, calling it “a really exciting time to get into interplanetary science, and to see what we can learn about the solar system”.
