Advancing a responsible space exploration strategy for Australia
Project Duration: 1 November 2023 – 30 June 2024
CSIRO’s In Situ Resource Utilisation (ISRU) space resources test bed is augmented with extended reality visualisation and scanning – the test bed presents an analogue Moon landscape for robotics testing, and is located at QCAT, Pullenvale, Queensland.
CSIRO’s In Situ Resource Utilisation (ISRU) space resources test bed is augmented with extended reality visualisation and scanning – the test bed presents an analogue Moon landscape for robotics testing, and is located at QCAT, Pullenvale, Queensland.
The Challenge
Australia’s space industry is growing at an accelerated rate. So, it’s critical to establish robust approaches that support underpinning scientific research and help ensure the responsible use of essential resources in space – such as water, oxygen, minerals and metals.
Countries around the world are performing scientific research to support space exploration. Their space industries are often decades old. This means research objectives are typically grounded in well-established plans, that are renewed in line with long-standing processes.
Australia has great heritage in deep space research, space communications and satellite and low-Earth-orbit technologies. But space exploration is a relatively new field for Australia.
To inform the direction of this new industry, we need an understanding of the key questions being asked by Australian space science experts, as well as new methods to collect and analyse knowledge in ways that are rigorous, robust and repeatable.
Our Response
Our Responsible Innovation Future Science Platform is partnering with our Mineral Resources and Space and Astronomy Business Units and Space Technology Future Science Platform for this project to advance a responsible space exploration strategy for Australia.
By working collaboratively across the key sectors developing the new space exploration industry, we hope to establish a systematic, sector-based scientific framework. The research team will work with key stakeholders and experts to test and validate this new framework for responsible space exploration.
This will provide government, academia and industry with the necessary tools to develop a space exploration agenda based on best practice, responsible innovation methods. It will also help identify and mitigate the range of critical risks associated with the growing number of space missions, space science and resource exploration activities.
Impact
This research will establish a shared approach to responsible space exploration research, drawing on the experience and perspectives of a range of space science experts and sectors. In doing so, it will help this burgeoning industry to move beyond ad hoc processes, and establish a systematic, sector-based, scientific approach for identifying and mitigating social and ethical risks.
Our findings will contribute to a range of clear and ongoing benefits:
- Informed research directions, guided by a new knowledge base for space exploration research, which has been collated ethically and equitably and is representative of and endorsed by the broader planetary science community of Australia. This is the first time that data collection of this nature has been undertaken by and for the Australian space research community.
- Ongoing collaborative research growth that is informed and supported by the repeatable and ethically sensitive method developed in this research project.
- Sustainable and ethically considered research, designed and undertaken by the Australian planetary sciences community and supported by the validated framework and knowledge-sharing protocols we develop in this project.
The framework will support the open discussion which the planetary science community needs to move ahead. It will ethically explore and collect the community’s key interests and beliefs. And it will help identify where and how responsible innovation can augment a planetary exploration roadmap for Australia.
With this in place, a later phase in the research would examine the critical risks that must be managed to ensure confidence in the societal, commercial and technical benefits of Australian planetary space research activities.
Team
Jane Hodgkinson (Project Lead), David Douglas, Jonathon Ralston, Chad Hargrave, Matt Shaw and Nick Carter
As part of the delivery of this project, a stakeholder workshop, co-led by Monash University, QUT and CSIRO, will take place as part of the Australian Planetary Science Meeting in February 2024: https://research.csiro.au/space/planetary-science-meeting-2024/
https://www.csiro.au/en/news/All/News/2021/December/New-lunar-testbed-helping-robots-Moon-walk
Related research:
The Space Technology Future Science Platform (ST FSP) In Situ Resource Utilisation project, https://www.csiro.au/en/work-with-us/use-our-labs-facilities/isru-facility which examines how resources in space can be used by space missions to prolong their activities and assist the Moon to Mars missions, has identified resource value chain needs that align to key capabilities in CSIRO. This project is supported by the Space Technology FSP and our Mineral Resources and Space and Astronomy Business Units. The team has also involved expertise from our Manufacturing and Agriculture & Food Business Units for around four years to advance this research.