This week and next is World Space Week, which is an international celebration of science and technology and contribution for the betterment of humankind.
This year’s theme “Space and Entrepreneurship” recognises the growing significance of the commercial partners and entrepreneurs on the space industry.
Professor Andrew Dempster, Director of the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research, and mining engineering expert, Professor Serkan Saydam, from UNSW School of Minerals and Energy Resource Engineering share their predictions on what trends we can expect to see take off in the next decade.
Race to the moon
Director of the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research, Professor Andrew Dempster, predicts that the globe will compete to reach the moons south pole.
“As spectators of this global race, we can expect to see both nations ramp up their activity as we move closer to their target of 2030,” Prof. Dempster said.
“China have been talking about setting up a functioning lunar economy at the South Pole by 2050 which is a couple decades later than the Americans who have ambitions to set up permanent presence by 2030.
“Interestingly, it was India who got there first and beat both China and USA at their own game. Despite this achievement, I still think the race is between China and the United States.”
Off-earth mining
Market predictions for lunar mining, particularly lunar water, project a multibillion-dollar industry by 2050.
Mining expert, Professor Serkan Saydam, from UNSW School of Minerals and Energy Resource Engineering, says we can expect to see space mining happen first on the Moon followed by Mars and asteroids.
“Potential mining sites encompass the Moon, Mars and its moons, asteroids, and comets. This aligns with NASA’s ARTEMIS program which aims to set up a lunar colony,” he said.
“The main focus in terms of creating a colony on Mars is finding water – and being able to extract it and process it using robots before human’s land.”
Growth in the Australian space economy
According to the Australian Space Agency, $3 billion has already been invested into the nation’s space sector between 2018 to 2023 with over 600 organisations contributing to advancing Australia’s space capability.
Backed by various international treaties and agreements and coupled with a strong pipeline of planned capital investments on the way, the Australian space economy is projected to grow by 7.1 per cent per annum over the next five years.
Prof. Dempster said: “The Australian space landscape is fascinating in that in general we don’t have a large presence of the big space primes like Lockheed Martin, Boeing or Airbus, but instead our industry is made up mostly of many start-ups.”
Space debris
While the space economy is enormous, one of the biggest problems is actually very small.
The European Space Agency estimates there’s more than 170 million pieces of space debris larger than one millimetre currently floating around space.
Even an item that small has the potential to damage or destroy sub-systems on board a spacecraft.
One of the main demands for more satellites to be placed in low earth orbits is the growing trend to provide broadband internet access and remote satellite sensing.
As more satellites are launched, the number of debris grows, and the risk of a catastrophic collision subsequently increases.
“As space agencies and private space companies launch more satellites into space, this increases the proliferation of space junk,” said Prof. Dempster.
“For example, SpaceX are launching many thousands of satellites into orbit every single year and the likelihood of them colliding with each other and creating more space junk is only increasing – and the tipping point can’t be too far away.”