Written by Aaron Fernandes Thursday, 28 January 2010 11:55
2010 looks set to be a big year for Australia’s international role in space research, with the University of Western Australia’s Zadko project getting the year started with a big bang.
After being acknowledged by the federal government for the project’s critical role in expanding Australia’s role in global space research with a funding grant, Zadko project leaders are now looking to the year ahead and the arrival of international space researchers.
UWA Senior Research Fellow and Zadko Project leader Dr David Coward says the arrival of scientists from the French research group ‘Tarot’, experts in what is known as ‘robotic astronomy’ and tracking space debris, will place WA astronomers at the forefront of space exploration.
“The French have designed a very effective image analysis procedure for tracking debris. They can actually track small pieces of debris even with very small telescopes, about 25cm in diameter on the main mirror.
“What’s exciting for us is we have a 1m telescope, so we can see much smaller sized objects. However, we have to determine the exact limit of that by doing field tests, it’s hard to predict how sensitive we can go down.
“It’s going to be an interesting year. This is an area that could have implications for the big telecommunications companies, whist at the same time will help to raise Australia’s space research profile.”
Dr Coward says space debris is essentially all the material that’s in orbit around the Earth that has occurred through collisions as well as parts detaching during satellite launches, such as paint or metal, and even redundant satellites.
“NASA have a program where they’re trying to map as much of this debris as possible. The amount of debris is increasing at such a huge rate, that it requires a global effort.”
The task for the new arrivals from the Tarot group will be to implement their space debris tracking procedures on the Zadko telescope to monitor satellites that are either geo-synchronous of Australasia or low Earth orbit satellites.
The first researchers will arrive in March before software engineers arrive in April with the aim to have preliminary results by the middle of the year.
Dr Coward says the federal government conducted a senate report only a few months ago, with the aim of identifying ways of raising Australia’s profile in space-based research.
“Australia doesn’t have a space agency, like the French, so the government prepared the senate report to target areas where Australia could play a significant role and expand our space-based interests and space debris tracking was one of those areas.
“We are looking at ways of exploring the area of space debris tracking and furthering Australia’s space research profile, especially because Australia has assets, such as telecommunication satellites, that are really important.”
The Zadko project leaders hope to use the success of the coming months to secure funding agreements with industry groups, to ensure the long term sustainability of the research.
“With the French collaboration, they can track debris and if it looks like there is a probability of an impact, they essentially rank the threat of a collision. If it looks like there will be an impact, the satellites can actually be moved away. So space debris is a very significant area,” Dr Coward says.
