Australian Space Park in Adelaide, to be nation’s first dedicated space manufacturing hub, fails to take off
An artist's impression of the Australian Space Park manufacturing complex to be sited at Adelaide Airport. A 2023 change by the South Australian government, prioritising Lot Fourteen space precinct on North Terrace, Adelaide city, put the space park project on hold.
The $66 million Australian Space Park plan, announced in 2021, to be sited at Adelaide Airport, was projected to make South Australia a major manufacturer of satellites and flying cars but failed to take off after the state government pulled funding in 2023.
The federal ($20 million) and South Australian ($20 million) Steven Marshall Liberal governments were the major initial investors in the park – Australia’s first dedicated space manufacturing hub. Four companies – Fleet Space Technologies, Q-CTRL, AtSpace and Alauda Aeronautics – also were involved from the start as partners and investors. Another big player in the space industry, Airbus, joined the Silicon Valley-like park concept in 2022. The purpose-built space park would boost manufacturing capabilities with a focus on small satellites and their payloads, rockets and electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles (eVTOL).
A common user area would be set up at the park to provide Australian space manufacturers with access to support for small satellite and component manufacturing, with potential to scale up. This aimed to drive collaboration between Australia’s local space manufacturers and support companies to manufacture at scale, collaborate and equip themselves for global commercial and supply chain opportunities.
Among the first park's tenants, Fleet Space Technologies, a small satellite manufacturer, would design, engineer and accelerate the development of small satellites to drive down costs and democratise the technology. Alauda Aeronautics was the company behind the Airspeeder flying car race series, developing the technology as a test bed for future air mobility.
AtSpace, the sister company to TiSPACE from Taiwan, was founded in Australia in 2021 with a rocket manufacturing plant in the Adelaide northwestern suburb of Wingfield. It was developing non-explosive hybrid rocket propulsion technologies that enabled fast turnaround space launch services and partnered with South-Australian-based company Southern Launch. Airbus said its major manufacturing plant at the Australian Space Park would allow satellites of up to 300 kilograms to be produced, and with a level of technological sophistication not previously possible in Australia.
The incoming Peter Malinaukas Labor state government welcomed an overseas trade delegation in March 2023 and spruiked the space park as “the first dedicated space manufacturing hub in Australia”. But businesses that had expressed interest in taking park in a consortium contributing $26 million towards the $66 million project were told on June 15 that the government had changed its plans. It would now focus on the Lot Fourteen space precinct on North Terrace in the city and that money to “support space manufacturing capability” wouldn't be available before late 2024.
