Page 42 - Australian Defence Magazine Nov 2020
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SPACE LAUNCH
NOVEMBER 2020 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
 New legislation which went into effect in August 2019 provides greater clarity and flexibility for the domestic space industry, including streamlining he ASA’s approvals processes, its website states.
REGULATION TIMELINE CONCERNS
However, such streamlining has not been immediately appar- ent to some industry members. ASA head Dr Megan Clark stated as recently as September that it could take six months to assess a complex rocket launch application after its re- ceipt. (The US Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA’s) website refers to 180 days to assess launch applications, with the clock stopped where additional information is required).
For its recent Koonibba missions, Southern Launch submit- ted two launch applications in September 2019; one to CASA for under 100 km, and one to the ASA for more than 100 km on the basis that the rocket was capable of flying higher if required, simply by elevating the launch rail several degrees.
“CASA have approved rocket launches before and they run on the tried and tested US regulatory system. Our ASA appli- cation involved exactly the same rocket and the same process- es, with the option of a higher flight if approved,” Dank said.
“By September 2020 CASA had completed its assessment and authorised two launches and the ASA had not started its technical assessment although it had been advised that we risked losing our customer if we could not launch before the end of September.
“We initially told the ASA we hoped for approval by March, and it took them until July to conduct a gap analy- sis to compare what we had submitted to what they thought they expected. We’ve already started losing business and we’ve advised the ASA about that on numerous occasions.
“In the US, launches below 150km are a very simple pro- cess, a very cheap process, and very time-efficient; you’re talking days and weeks, not months and years as we’re ex- periencing,” Dank said.
The ASA’s Murfett noted that under Australia’s Space (Launches and Returns) Act 2018, space objects travelling above 100km, or high power rockets, have different legisla- tive requirements to ensure that the activity is as safe as reasonably practicable.
The Act’s purpose includes implementing certain of Austra- lia’s obligations under the UN Space Treaties, which includes potential liability for the Commonwealth for any damage caused by a space object. The ASA would continue to work closely with Southern Launch on its applications, Murfett said.
Adam Gilmour, brother of James and CEO of Gilmour Space Technologies, states that what is missing from launch applications is a template, an absence echoed by ELA’s Scott who describes the current documentation as “undeliverable”.
“You can read the Space ASA rules but there’s not a lot of clarity. On a particular point should it be a paragraph or should it be a whole page?” Gilmour asks.
“There’s something like 40,000 small satellites that need to be launched in the next seven years into low earth obit and then regularly be resupplied as they fail and fall back to earth.
“We have to work with the ASA to get more clarity around how much detail it wants for each piece of the rules. There’s a market out there which we estimate to be worth more than $US5 billion annually.”
COST RECOVERY FOR LAUNCH?
A further contentious issue for industry remains the possi- bility of recovery by the Commonwealth in whole or in part of launch application assessment costs.
Should a cost recovery model be introduced, Australia will become the first OECD nation to apply an equivalent tax on launch operations, potentially pricing local launch companies out of the international market and driving Aus- tralian satellite providers to overseas locations, such as the Rocket Lab facility in NZ.
The 2020 Budget papers disclose that the government won’t be charging for space launches just yet, due to the impact of COVID-19 on the wider Australian industry.
Nevertheless industry figures point out there’s been no decision not to eventually introduce such costs. These have been quoted in recent studies at as much as $200,000 per launch, and could be doubled given an ASA statement in January that complex applications could require consider- ation by a technical expert contractor.
Adam Gilmour says his company has closed two commer- cial launch contracts in the last few months, and is target- ing 12 rockets a year by 2025.
But he’s disappointed at what he describes as the ASA’s lack of support to date for the dominant start-up launch- related companies.
Agreeing there is no specific program to support launch ac- tivities, the ASA’s Murfett points out that Space is one of the six manufacturing priorities included in the $1.3 billion mod- ern manufacturing initiative announced by the Prime Minister on 1 October ‘so there’s now a program that might be appli- cable for this priority’. ■
ABOVE: Australia is set to expand its space presence with both Space 1.0 and 2.0 platforms.
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