This month, the SmartSat CRC Conference 2024 saw a fantastic showing of research, with the perfect mix of strategic vision, partnership engagement and technical showcasing.

The program provided a perfect sampling of speakers from within the SmartSat ecosystem and beyond, all aligned to the theme of enduring value and impact.

The annual conference provides an excellent opportunity to reflect on the achievements of the organisation, and this year we were able to see the technical fruits of the SmartSat portfolio, with many of our technologies maturing and transitioning, the broader ecosystem growing, and more stakeholders being engaged.

We had some amazing showcase speakers to start off both days of the conference. Dr Christyl Johnson, Deputy Centre Director for Technology and Research Investments at NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre was of course a fantastic start to the conference. Dr Johnson highlighted the importance of space technology investment (like SmartSat) and the value of having long term vision and execution plans and to capture the impact that technology has back on Earth, remembering it’s not all about space!

Professor Matt Angling from BAE Space – a core industry partner working directly with SmartSat on projects like SCARLET-ɑ – and helping drive our research to relevance and applicability. The BAE Azalea mission, highlighted in his presentation, is a great example of industry-led space capability development and tech demonstration. Colonel Clifford White discussed space technology and the use of space assets still being key to many facets of Defence, particularly satellite communications and Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT). This was followed by SmartSat’s own Strategic Advisor, Lieutenant General Larry James (Ret’d) talking about the importance of technology development for future space capabilities.

There is some great innovative research coming from our partners, and what was evident by the conference the value SmartSat brings to shape the research, manage and guide the project teams and actively ensure the outputs are reached and applicable to the problems addressed. There was also a great set of Earth Observation (EO) projects on show, particularly around the Queensland EO Hub and the Maya Nula program, displaying some great use of remote and insitu sensing for intelligence and impact here on Earth.

The Kanyini Mission took up a significant portion of the conference, with a heavy focus on what we can do with that little cubesat in terms of research and applied demonstrations. The reach is broad with dedicated sessions both on the downstream analytics projects that aim to use the Kanyini images, as well as with onboard Artificial Intelligence (AI) demonstrations.

These showcase SmartSat making Kanyini a Smart Satellite – a significant SmartSat contribution to the South Australian Government investment. We also got to hear from the stakeholders who will benefit from the Kanyini research projects from South Australian Government, including Davina White, GIS Lead at Department of Primary Industries & Regions (PIRSA) and James Peters, Senior Policy Officer at Greening SA.

The conference saw an excellent array of PhD presenters, covering topics from AI and EO to emergency messaging and crystal manufacturing. The winning presentation was by Vibor Thapliyal from La Trobe University (Project P1.25s) on his research into advancing and growing his own tuneable photonic crystals to enhance satellite-to-satellite communication systems. Nermine Hendy from RMIT University (Project P2.41s) took out the Best Technical Poster award for her research into interference localization and mitigation in Synthetic Aperture Radars.

I was particularly proud of our European Space Agency/Phi-Lab interns, of whom Nermine was one, for representing Australia, SmartSat and their respective universities on the world stage, gaining invaluable experience and networking contacts that will boost their career into the future.  

Scarlet Lab Workshop with BAE/DSTG

The week of the SmartSat Conference we also held a workshop with partners BAE and Defence Science and Technology Group in the SCARLET Lab, where attendees discussed portfolio of space technology under SmartSat with those key partners, focusing on spacecraft autonomy, onboard AI, and satellite communications. There were discussions around technology maturation opportunities and advancing projects, with BAE offering insights into their upcoming Azalea and Dragon missions. It was a good opportunity to strengthen the three-way partnership.

 The SCARLET Lab has also had some great accomplishments recently, as we saw from the Alpha (ɑ) and Beta (β) projects. DSTG spoke to the importance and value SmartSat brings to leverage their funding on the Buccaneer cubesat and applying autonomous algorithms. This is an excellent example of applying autonomy and AI to take a hardware system and tailor and adapt it to make it smarter. This allows us to achieve more with the platform and gain experience with autonomous spacecraft operations for Defence.

Dr Carl Seubert
Chief Research Officer