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SYDNEY, Australia – Australia and the United Kingdom renewed their commitment to space-related cooperation in an agreement signed Oct. 1 at the International Astronautical Congress here.
Enrico Palermo, Australian Space Agency head, and Paul Bate, UK Space Agency chief executive, re-signed the Space Bridge Framework Arrangement. Space Bridge was established in 2021 to expand investment, research and cooperation.
“Companies and academic groups in Australia and in the UK want to collaborate, but the government can make those collaborations easier and provide some funding when it comes to the research and development side,” Bates told SpaceNews.
For example, Space Bridge has fostered Australia-UK regulatory cooperation.
“We are both developing spaceflight ecosystems,” Palermo said. “How can we harmonize? How can we share lessons learned? That’s been another part of the Space Bridge.”
Bilateral Fund
An example of the bilateral cooperation is AquaWatch, a space and ground-based initiative focused on water-quality monitoring that includes Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd., Pixalytics Ltd., Assimila Ltd., the University of Stirling, RAL Space, Australia’s national science agency CSIRO and Deloitte Australia. The AquaWatch partners will receive 479,000 pounds ($644,142) to integrate satellite data with in-situ water measurements.
AquaWatch was one of 23 projects awarded money Sept. 30 from the UK Space Agency’s International Bilateral Fund. The fund backs projects that pair UK companies and research organizations with partners in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Japan, Lithuania and the United States. The UK is providing a total of 6.5 million pounds to the 23 projects.
Another effort, Long Baseline Multistatic Radar for Deep Space Domain Awareness, joins the University of Birmingham with Goonhilly Earth Station, the University of Manchester, CSIRO and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory. The partners will receive 452,000 pounds to detect and track small objects in geostationary orbit.
In addition, the Satellite Applications Catapult Ltd., Space Machines and the University of Sydney were awarded 447,000 pounds to study how liquid fuel moves inside spacecraft and how that movement affects stability and pointing.
Space Machines also is working with Lunasa Ltd. on a project aimed at developing key technologies for autonomous rendezvous and proximity operation (RPO). The partners will integrate Lúnasa’s autonomous StarLogic RPO kit into GEO-Viper, Space Machines’ commercial inspection satellite. The initiative will receive 392,000 pounds from the International Bilateral Fund.
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