25 Jun 2020
News

Fleet Space awarded Accelerated Discovery Initiative grant funding to accelerate mineral discovery

25 Jun 2020

Fleet Space Technologies has been awarded a quarter of a million dollars grant through the Accelerated Discovery Initiative (ADI) program, which forms part of the South Australian Government’s Growth State Agenda. This program aims to accelerate mineral discovery through innovative exploration and research projects in regional and frontier terrains throughout South Australia. 

The Fleet Space large-array wireless sensing project, which is a collaboration with OZ Minerals and University of Adelaide, will see the remote mapping heat flow project present a new approach to mineral exploration beneath cover.

Traditionally a high cost operation involving the digging of deep boreholes, Fleet Space and University of Adelaide ’s new innovative method for measuring heat flow is through an extensive array of low-cost heat needles. These sensors measure temperature at 20 cm intervals on a probe 1 m long, that can be easily and rapidly deployed, and without intrusive disruption to the environment.

OZ Minerals and has been investigating new exploration techniques using machine learning and new data capture methods to accelerate discoveries. Now, with the addition of nanosatellite connectivity from Fleet Space and research from the University of Adelaide, huge amounts of new data can be used to efficiently explore deeper under cover in Australia’s most remote regions.

This will be a world-first trial of an exciting new approach to remote monitoring, that has application to groundwater, geothermal energy and space exploration.

Read more here.