Australian CubeSats successfully launched into space

South Australian-manufactured cube satellite (CubeSat) Kanyini was successfully launched into space over the weekend, onboard a SpaceX rocket that departed from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. It was one of 116 satellites on SpaceX’s Transporter-11 Mission — the company’s 11th dedicated smallsat rideshare mission.

Billed as the first state government-funded satellite in Australia, Kanyini is the result of years of dedication and hard work from the SmartSat Cooperative Research Centre (SmartSat CRC), the South Australian Space Industry Centre, Adelaide-based commercial satellite manufacturer Inovor Technologies and global IoT provider Myriota. It is part of a $6.5 million project to create hi-tech jobs in South Australia’s space sector and develop vital space capabilities in the state.

Now that Kanyini is in orbit, the next milestone for the project is to establish stable communications through an operations centre located at Inovor Technologies in Lot Fourteen, Adelaide. Once fully commissioned, Kanyini will deliver critical space data for use by government and research institutions, particularly in the areas of sustainability and climate impacts.

One of the research initiatives to be undertaken by Kanyini involves early bushfire detection, utilising technology that can detect fires from space 500 times faster than traditional processing. Traditionally Earth observation satellites have not had the processing capabilities to analyse complex images of Earth captured from space in real time, but a research team led by the University of South Australia has overcome this by building a lightweight AI model that can detect smoke within the available onboard processing, power consumption and data storage constraints of cube satellites.

A second initiative, led by Flinders University in conjunction with the South Australian Department for Environment and Water (DEW) and Green Adelaide, will evaluate the effectiveness of a thermal infrared sensor onboard Kanyini for mapping urban heatwaves. By leveraging thermal imagery from Kanyini in conjunction with data from other orbiting satellites, researchers will be able to create detailed maps of thermal hotspots associated with heatwaves across SA urban areas, and assess the impact of urban green spaces on mitigating these heatwaves. Until now, images of South Australia have been sourced from foreign satellites, limiting access to up-to-date, detailed images of areas of interest.

Finally, data collected by Kanyini will be used to develop robust and trustworthy AI capabilities that can accurately predict natural disasters such as landslides and flooding, as part of a project led by the Queensland University of Technology and European Space Agency’s Φ-Lab.

“The Kanyini mission is not just about sending a satellite into space; it’s about building South Australia’s capabilities and contributing valuable data for applications that enhance our lives here in South Australia,” said SmartSat CRC CEO Andy Koronios.

“We have now realised our mission of seeing homegrown South Australian space technologies launched into low Earth orbit. The coming months will be crucial as the team works to fully operationalise Kanyini and begin reaping the benefits of its data-gathering capabilities.”

In addition to Kanyini, the Transporter-11 Mission also included the Australian-made Waratah Seed WS-1 and CUAVA-2 CubeSats. The Waratah Seed WS-1 is Australia’s first commercial rideshare mission, with six space startup company payloads onboard, while CUAVA-2 is focused on fundamental space environmental research aiming to better understand the low Earth orbit domain.

Image caption: The launch of SpaceX’s Transporter-11 mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.