00:00As the US scales back funding under its latest federal budget, cancelling high-profile
00:06missions and shuttering NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, other countries are stepping
00:11up to fill the gap. Australia is positioning itself as an emerging leader in space exploration
00:17with ambitions to drive innovation in the field. Astro Awani correspondent Fei Kuan reports
00:23more on this from Adelaide. Australia has long played a supportive role in global space exploration,
00:32but now there's growing ambition to lead. Here at the Andy Thomas Centre for Space Resources at the
00:38University of Adelaide, cutting-edge technology is being developed for construction on the moon
00:43and for long-term human habitation in space. And with Australia planning to send a rover to the moon,
00:49hopefully by 2029, I speak to Professor Anima Wyatt, Director of Astronaut Autonomy Teaming
00:55over here, on what sets Australia apart in the ever-evolving space race.
01:00So Australia has obviously a lot of space, literally space. It has a lot of clear skies as well
01:06and hopefully a very strong innovation ecosystem. Adelaide University is a leader in this area
01:11with the Andy Thomas Centre for Space Resources. We're focusing on deep space habitation, but we're
01:16also linked into the ecosystem in South Australia and helping to grow the ecosystem in Australia
01:21more broadly as well. So that's about partnering with international partners like NASA and JAXA and
01:26the ESA, but also partnering with local companies like Neumann Space and ELO2 for the rover as well.
01:32So we have great talent in terms of our students. We have amazing facilities here that are world
01:38leading in terms of analog facilities. And we also have many launch sites in Australia, lots of satellite
01:44launch sites and also with Gilmore Space, hopefully our first shuttle launch very soon. So I think
01:52Australia now has the opportunity to take its place as truly being a space nation and not only just
01:58being a participant in a collaborator with other countries, but to become a leader. Anna outlined how
02:05experts from different disciplines were collaborating to turn deep space exploration into a reality for the
02:12near future. The Andy Thomas Centre for Space Resources is focused on long-term deep space
02:18habitation. And what that means is that we're a multidisciplinary group that's interested in
02:22understanding how you prepare roads, how you develop the materials that you need to prepare roads and
02:27also habitats for humans. But we also see humans as a central part of this ecosystem. So we need habitats
02:35that can house the humans. We also need robots that will work with the humans. So then we need to also
02:40understand astronaut autonomy teaming to understand how they'll work together. And we also have members
02:48who work on the regulation aspects of this. So we have a professor of space law and we have architects,
02:54engineers, experts in AI and robotics, as well as civil engineers working together.
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