Australia is late to the space agency party, but that's not necessarily a bad thing

An era of tiny satellites and reusable rockets is a great time to establish a space agency.

After announcing plans for a national space agency in September, the Federal Government will put its money where its mouth is.

On Tuesday, it will commit $50 million of seed funding in this year's budget to establish the Australian space agency.

Looking abroad, Australia is pretty late to the party. Most developed nations already have a space agency of sorts.

But the Australian space agency could use its belated debut to its advantage.

Gone are the days of space being accessible only by big agencies backed by budgets of billions of dollars.

Shrinking technology plus powerful, reusable rockets have brought the cost of sending a satellite into space from hundreds of millions of dollars to tens of thousands.

Australia can design its space agency to suit this era of "Space 2.0", according to Andrew Dempster, head of the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research at the University of New South Wales.

"Space has been disrupted. Now we have cheap launches and small satellites," Professor Dempster said.

"Designing a space agency in 2018 means these [new technologies] can be exploited."

Australia is already home to plenty of space start-ups, some of which have already struck deals with NASA and other space agencies.

The thing is, Australia isn't launch ready: we don't have rockets which can carry satellites into space, nor do we have the launch infrastructure to blast off from.

Both of these, Professor Dempster said, are being addressed by start-ups now.

A company in the Northern Territory, for instance, is working with traditional owners to establish a launch site.

The Top End is an attractive launch zone. A launch near the equator can be "slingshot" off the rapidly rotating Earth and needs less fuel to reach escape velocity.

But even though there will soon be a $50-million space pot, we won't see satellites launched from Australia immediately. Give it a couple of years.

"People's expectations on that front should be managed," Professor Dempster said. "It takes time."

And he would know. The Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research, which he directs, was founded in 2010.

But it wasn't until last year that he and colleagues around Australia managed to launch small satellites called CubeSats from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

They were the first Australian-built satellites to launch in 15 years.

How a space agency will give start-ups a leg up

Australia currently holds about 0.8 per cent of the global space market, says Anna Moore, who heads the Advanced Instrumentation and Technology Centre at the Australian National University's Mount Stromlo Observatory.

"Our goal is to get to 1.8 per cent, which would be equivalent to our share in GDP terms," Professor Moore said.

"It's pretty incredible that we've managed to get 0.8 per cent without a national space agency."

The local space industry has grown about 10 per cent each year over the past two decades.

So why bother funding a space agency at all, then?

"Now that we have one, we won't see steady growth — it will be accelerated," Professor Moore said.

"What will be handy is having a single 'front door' for start-ups."

Professor Moore was part of the expert reference group that undertook the federal government's space industry capability review.

She interviewed members of start-ups around Australia.

A space agency won't only provide financial support, she said: "It will help new start-ups to not have reinvent the wheel.

"Getting set up, like applying for a launch licence, is daunting to do that all on your own."

A local space agency will also form new and consolidate existing international links.

Australia already plays host to international space agencies. NASA and ESA have ground-based tracking stations here, which keep an eye on their spacecraft.

While loads of countries have space agencies, only 12 are capable of launching satellites.

The most recent was New Zealand. Start-up Rocket Lab sent a payload into orbit earlier this year, less than two years after New Zealand formed its own space agency.

When it comes to comparing Australia with other countries, Professor Moore said the UK and Canada are probably the closest.

The Canadian Space Agency was formed in 1989. Its 2017/18 planned budget is about $344 million.

The UK Space Agency replaced the British National Space Centre in 2010. Its 2017/18 budget is $700 million and aims for 10 per cent of the space market by 2030.

Still, NASA makes everything else look like small change.

Its latest estimates projected a budget hovering around $US19 billion ($25.3 billion) per year.

Of course, NASA's scope is far wider than Australia's. The Australian space agency won't be launching spacecraft to Mars, for instance.

What it can do, Professor Dempster said, is monitor our enormous landmass and surrounds.

Satellites monitoring the Murray-Darling Basin river system might have detected the water disappearing, for instance.

With seed funding for a space agency, "there's no reason to think that new companies won't appear in the next couple of years", he said.