This is great news, and about 3 years early according to my estimates at what needed to be achieved before the ASA was allocated more funding.
There is still a lot of fog around what this will mean, how it will be controlled and deployed. I think it’s quite clear the big end of town will get a large chunk of this - lots of language in synergy with the work Woodside Energy is doing with NASA from Perth.
Given the political and beurocratic challenges the ASA have faced in deploying the tiny $19m International Space Investment fund they’re going to need a lot of help to understand how they should efficiently allocate this much capital.
I hope, though, that given the primary focus of the ASA so far is to build a portfolio of targeted and easy wins with a goal of securing a larger budget in 3 years time, that this funding means the agency become a bit more relaxed and expand their scope to support the local space community and startups since they haven’t had this on their agenda yet.
Scott Morrison announces $150m for Australian space industry
