📋 Tender Overview
Western Australia will soon be building commercial satellites with the Cook Government today announcing another boost to expand the local space industry.
At the lauch of WA Space Week, the Minister for Science Stephen Dawson said the State Government had committed $3.5 million towards establishing a local commercial satellite build capability.
The funding is being directed through the Government's Investment Attraction Fund (IAF) towards assisting WA Earth Observation company LatConnect 60 to construct WA's first ever commercial satellite assembly facility.
The facility will be suitable for:
satellite payload development and manufacturing;
satellite assembly; and
payload integration.
LatConnect 60 is co-investing a further $3.5 million (for a total of $7 million) to fund sensor calibration, spectrum licence, ground segment (operations and communications) along with data processing.
The multi-million dollar funding package will facilitate the construction of a satellite that will be launched in 2026 and will be used to detect, monitor and quantify greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across the world.
LatConnect 60 is aiming to provide near daily monitoring of assets globally and to achieve this they plan on building a constellation of up to 18 satellites in WA.
The market size of the global small satellite industry is expected to grow from US $2 billion in 2022 to US $13.2 billion by 2032.
Over 2,300 small satellites were launched in 2022 and a further 50,000 are anticipated to be launched globally by 2030.
