Philip Smart | Adelaide

An Australian company’s innovative deal to test space systems on the International Space Station has attracted interest from the DST Group as a tool for future systems development.

Adelaide’s Neumann Space has signed a deal with Airbus Defence and Space to mount its Facility for Australian Space Testing on Bartolomeo (FAST-Bartolomeo) “balcony” module on the European Columbus module on the ISS. With power and data connections, FAST-Bartolomeo allows companies and government agencies to rent space for a year on orbit, with prices starting at $70,000 per kilogram.

There’s some real key benefits in terms of regular, assured access to space

In September 2016 the partnership announced its first contracted payload, now slated for launch in 2019.

Neumann Space CEO Ian Whitchurch said FAST-Bartolomeo presented companies with a chance to prove their products, crossing the product development ‘valley of death’ between ground testing and the on-orbit validation that shows customers the system not only works, but works in space.

“To move to a level where customers are happy to buy the product, it has to be tested in space,” Whitchurch told a recent Defence Teaming Centre “Testing in Space” briefing in Adelaide.

“It doesn’t matter whether it is a commercial customer or a government customer. If you haven’t shown it works in space, the answer from the customer’s probably going to be, we’ll wait. We’ll see if you can get it to a stage where we can buy it.”

Whitchurch said a dedicated commercial satellite and launch could cost around $15 million to put 15 kilograms of payload in to orbit, while cubesats although cheaper are limited in payload.

Speaking at the briefing, DST Group’s Future Small Satellite Lead Iain Cartwright said DST Group was exploring the possibilities of FAST-Bartolomeo.

“There’s some real key benefits in terms of regular, assured access to space,” he said. “It’s taken a long time to get the Biarri missions going, because we had to build a whole spacecraft around it. Having that core infrastructure and being able to do this at a lower cost is all of great benefit, it’s very interesting to us.

“And some of the key mission areas that we think could be achieved are remote sensing missions and system flight heritage. We’re not sure we would use it to deliver a mission or capability, rather we would use it to fly a test bed to gain that on-orbit experience and flight heritage.”