Philip Smart | Adelaide

Adelaide will become the centre of the world’s space industry for four days in September, when up to 4,000 delegates from international space agencies, government and industry attend the 68th International Astronautical Congress (IAC).

Hosted in different nations each year, the IAC is the industry’s annual gathering to discuss current issues, the future of space and the economic and social impacts of the world’s space industry. This year’s program from September 25 to 29 will include presentations on innovative methods for ensuring secure access to space, Moon Mars villages, big data and next generation on-orbit satellite servicing programs, in addition to 178 technical sessions covering “every conceivable aspect of space activity”.

There hasn’t really been clarity around national space policy

The conference will also provide a forum for the major annual meetings or conferences of the Space Generation Advisory Council, International Academy of Astronautics and International Institute for Space Law.

But the event won’t be industry exclusive: while around 20 astronauts, the heads of major space agencies and space industry executives attend lectures and plenary sessions at the Adelaide Convention Centre, more than 600 school teachers and 1,400 primary school students will participate in space-related professional development and education programs in Adelaide’s State Library and Museum, with 120 high school students expected to volunteer as guides across the program.

The library and museum will host community exhibitions covering the history of South Australia’s Woomera rocket range, Hubble space telescope imagery, indigenous perspectives of the heavens and the career of SA astronaut Andy Thomas. The program will also include site visits to Woomera, local observatories and industry sites.

IAC2017 CEO Brett Biddington said the presence of the conference in Australia may also focus Australian industry and government on firming up a policy and strategy for helping Australian companies participate in growth of commercial space services.

“If as a result of this conference, there’s sufficient interest and impetus to say we do have to do better than what we’re doing, we do have to fill the Australian seat in the councils of the world around space, that to me would be a brilliant outcome,” Biddington said in Adelaide last week.

“It would actually provide a degree of certainty. I sense that there’s also been a reluctance to invest in space activity because there hasn’t really been clarity around national space policy.”

In its Advancing Australia in Space white paper released earlier this year, the Space Industry Association of Australia (SIAA) said increasing the Australian space industry’s 0.8 per cent share of a global space economy – worth around $330 billion in 2014 – was not a problem of capability, but of coordination and international credibility. 

IAC 2017 CEO Brett Biddington. Credit: Louise Bagger

Australia hosted the 1998 IAC conference and unsuccessfully bid for the 2014 event. The 2017 bid, led by the SIAA with assistance from the Adelaide Convention Bureau and SA State Government, won against bids from Bremen in Germany, the US State of Florida and Istanbul in Turkey.