$500k allocated to five projects under UK-Australia Space Bridge

 

The UK-Australia Space Bridge has announced the 5 research projects for funding from the field of 45 applicants. FrontierSI, in partnership with Symbios Communications and Assimila Ltd (UK) are delighted to be recipients of funding for the project ‘Cal/Val Space Bridge: An Earth Observation Partnership’. The project aims to build linkages and markets between Australia and UK – two countries with proud heritage and specialisation in the calibration and validation of Earth observation data. This niche will be vital for assuring the quality of data from EO as the number and diversity of missions increases exponentially in the coming years.

The Space Bridge program, managed and led by SmartSatCRC in collaboration with the other funding partners, is supported by Austrade, the Australian Space Agency, the UK Government, and the UK Space Agency. Respondents submitting under the program were required to have partners from the UK and Australia, with a minimum of one industry partner.

The five projects will explore and advance satellite technologies for a range of uses identified as strategically beneficial to the mutual interests of each country.

The projects selected are:

  • Cal/Val Space Bridge: An Earth Observation Partnership
    Symbios Communications, FrontierSI and Assimila Ltd, The National Physical Laboratory
  • Modelling novel radio spectrum bands for next-generation satellite networks
    RMIT University and OneWeb
  • IceCube: Monitoring Antarctic sea-ice with small satellites
    UNSW Sydney, University of Tasmania (Australia Australian Centre of Excellence in Antarctic Science, Australian Antarctic Program Partnership) and Spire Global UK, British Antarctic Survey
  • Australia’s Quantum Leap: to satellite quantum encryption
    Arqit Limited and Australian National University
  • Harvesting hyperspectral satellite data to improve crop production
    Digital Content Analysis Technology Ltd, InterGrain, and The Plant Accelerator, Australian Plant Phenomics Facility, The University of Adelaide

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