Australia has renewed an agreement with the USA to co-operate on civil space applications.
The United States and Australia initiated a cooperative relationship on GPS and space-based positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) systems in 2007.
The scheme aimed to ensure interoperability between GPS and Australia's Ground-based Regional Augmentation System (GRAS) and Ground-Based Augmentation System (GBAS).
US and Australian officials met late last month to review progress and examine how the agreement could be renewed.
The first day's discussion covered the use of the US GPS and its augmentations in the air transport field, the installation of ground monitoring stations that will improve performance, and applications for GPS including national spatial reference systems, weather forecasting, climate observation, space weather, and the economic uses of GPS time.
The second day's discussion focused on US and Australian space policy developments, the long-term sustainability of space activities and bilateral space science cooperation.
The resulting Joint Statement on Bilateral Cooperation in the Civil Use of GPS and Civil Space Activities reinforces and expands the 2007 partnership.
The framework ensures resilient access for Australia to the US GPS network. It also ensures the sharing of resources and information, and aims to promote skills and knowledge development and transfer between the countries.
Australia and the US will also work together on ways to reduce the threat of satellite collisions as well as on satellite-based land and sea remote sensing, climate change research, and meteorology.
Relevant agencies from the US and Australia will consult periodically to pursue the goals of the proposed core framework on cooperation. A review of civil space related cooperative activities between the two countries will be conducted annually.
Innovation minister senator Kim Carr said civil space infrastructure is critical to all Australians.
“Every day, we use civil space systems for applications ranging from GPS navigation to land and sea remote sensing,” he said. “This agreement formalises Australia’s continued access.”
