Australia will join the growing global space industry with its own national space agency, the government announced yesterday.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the agency would be part of Australia’s investment into science and innovation. “It’s a small agency to coordinate and lead. The space sector, of course, is one of enormous potential,” Turnbull told reporters, adding that many Australian companies would be involved. 
The Australian project will not be the American “Nasa-type agency to put man on the moon,” Education Minister Simon Birmingham said.
“There’s a big role for science. There’s a big role for industry.
We want to make sure Australia plays its part in both of those,” he told reporters in Adelaide yesterday. “The scientific pursuit in space is, in many ways, never-ending, but of course the commercial opportunities have expanded dramatically across defence, across communications, across transportation.”
The announcement comes after calls from the International Astronautical Federation, which is holding its annual congress in Adelaide, for Australia to establish its own space agency. Australia is one of just two members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) without any space agency. 
It was the third country, after the United States and the then Soviet Republic, to construct and launch a satellite in 1967. The images of US astronaut Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon were also transmitted through a Nasa tracking station in Australia.
But the government stopped investing further on space-related programs due to its high costs, critics say. The current Australian space sector focuses largely on satellite manufacturing, support ground equipment and the launch industry. It is not certain how much Australia plans to set aside for the upcoming space agency. The global space industry’s revenue is more than A$420bn (US $334.6bn) annually, according to the Australian government, and the sector has grown by about 10% each year since the late 1990s. 
“The global space industry is growing rapidly and it’s crucial that Australia is part of this growth,” Michaelia Cash, acting science and innovation minister, said in a statement earlier yesterday.


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