The head of the Australian Space Agency (ASA) says Australia’s space co-operation with India goes beyond supporting the Gaganyaan mission

Speaking to the Times of India this week while attending the 2024 Bangalore Space Expo, Enrico Palermo said he would be talking to counterparts at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) about other collaborations following India’s planned three-day crewed spaceflight, tentatively scheduled to launch in December and a precursor to more ambitious crewed spaceflights.

Australia is already involved with the first Gaganyaan mission, operating a temporary tracking station on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands to support it and collaborating on technological developments. Palmero calls the remote islands “the optimal spot to do tracking telemetry and control.”

“We’re also working on supporting India with scenarios where you might have emergency scenarios,” Palermo said. “If you look at the spacecraft’s trajectory, if there’s any aborts and a need to recover the crew, it will be in Australian waters.”

Palermo said Australia could also offer the Indian space industry its expertise in applied space medicine and life sciences, highlighting Australia’s work in Antarctica and remote sites.

“Other areas might be optical communications,” he said. “With optics and lasers, you can communicate at a much higher bandwidth (than radio frequencies). These are some of the areas where we look forward to exploring with our Indian counterparts on how we can integrate Australian science and technology to support the overall aspiration.”

India’s first Gaganyaan mission intends to demonstrate its sovereign human spaceflight capability by sending three astronauts to an orbit of 400 kilometres for three days before bringing them back and splashing down in Indian waters. The orbital module will piggyback into space on a domestically developed LVM-3 rocket, the workhorse of the ISRO space program.

The ASA head said that aside from supporting the Gaganyaan mission, Australia and India had already cooperated on some space programs, including using Australian communications networks to monitor the Chandrayaan-3 Moon rover in August 2023. Australia is looking at contributing an earth observation payload to India’s G20 satellite and is stumping up cash (AUD18 million) to support satellite projects developed by three Australian companies with Indian partners.

“Before we had the AUD18 million investment fund, we had the Australia – India Strategic Resource Fund, and that has invested over AUD100 million to drive these exact sorts of industry and academia collaborations,” Palermo said. “The missions we funded included Space Machines Company and (India’s) Digantara’s characterisation of the space environment. Digantara was incubated in Australia by the University of South Australia’s Catalyst program, and I think that shows the depth of exchange between the two countries from a smart ecosystem perspective, and also a smart investment perspective.”

“What we’re trying to do here is work out how to leverage each nation’s scientific expertise and comparative advantages. Collaborations run deep, and each program that has been funded has a level of Australian and Indian involvement.”

The 2024 Bangalore Space Expo runs until September 20.

(With Inputs From International News Agencies)