Canada's Lux Aerobot to use Lot Fourteen in Adelaide as base for its atmospheric balloon satellites' observations
One of the images from 23 kilometres above Earth during a trial of one of Lux Aerobot's atmospheric balloon satellites 50 kilometres east of Adelaide (showing the River Murray) in 2019.
Canadian space robotics company Lux Aerobot, specialising in design, making and operating atmospheric observation balloon satellites, announced in 2020 it would settle permanently at Stone & Chalk in Adelaide city’s Lot Fourteen innovation neighbourhood on North Terrace.
Lux Aerobot had been testing its atmospheric balloons in South Australia since 2019 after company founders Katrina Albert and Vincent Lachance realised their technology was better suited to regions closer to the equator. South Australia also was attractive due to its large defence, mining and agriculture industries.
One of Lux Aerobot's contracts for the Australian defence department was for bushfire and coastline monitoring. The bushfire monitoring project, with Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), aimed to give real-time information on the location of bushfires and predict where they would spread. Two balloon launches demonstrated the bushfire monitoring technology with a final launch in 2021 over a planned burn.
The coastline monitoring project, focused on tracking illegal activities on Australian coastlines, was with the University of South Australia’s institute of telecommunications research and the Australian institute for machine learning at the University of Adelaide.
In mining, Lux had up a 2019 agreement with Oz Minerals and three-year funding from Rio Tinto to develop technology for multiple units over a region.
Lux Aerobot’s core specialties were space engineering, artificial intelligence and machine learning. Its balloons’ control system allowed them to stay over a point of interest or be moved between locations to scan areas.
Katrina Albert said the opening of the Australian Space Agency in Adelaide attracted Lux to the state and the venture catalyst space programme at the University of South Australia’s innovation and collaboration centre also was an entry point.
