In South Australia�s outback, aerospace engineers from US-based Kistler Aerospace are conducting a feasibility study on how to turn Australia�s long abandoned spaceport Woomera, back into a thriving launch center for the 21st century.

At Sydney University, Dr Steven Vidakovic from the Defence Science and Technology Organisation, was recently on hand to receive an official charter from the 25,000-member American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) establishing the AIAA Sydney Section - the first ever international section of the AIAA.

Elsewhere in the Australian outback, farmers are turning to a new farming practice called precision farming that uses data received by remote sensing satellite to accurately measure the health of individual paddocks, and enabling farmers to better target their use of water and chemicals.

While at Optus and Telstra in-house groups are continuing to develop new satellite plans that will see both organisations launching their own satellites for many more years to come.

Despite virtually a total lack of government support, Australia�s space industry is not only surviving but possibly entering a new period of growth. But don�t look to Australia becoming a major satellite manufacturer or sprouting its own rockets.

The area action will be support services for telecommunication and remote sensing applications; with future employment prospects looking bright as demand grows for skilled electronics and software engineers.

According to Bruce Middleton managing director of Asia Pacific Aerospace Consultants, and a former head of the now disbanded Australian Space Office, "remote sensing is a growing segment in Australia, with the long held promise of remote sensing possibly about to become true. Costs have fallen, driving the private sector to recognize the benefits of remote sensing."

"There is potentially a big client base in the country, with spins offs to other industry sectors such as crop insurance, where coverage can now be dependent upon remote sensing data. Recently I gave a talk in western NSW, and I all excited about the opportunity to talk about precision farming. But I decided to ask, before launching into my talk, if the audience was at all familiar with the subject, it turned out that a significant number not only knew about it but were already using it," said Middleton.

Another growth area for remote sensing is for the mining industry, which can spend millions on routine ground surveys with few results. Reducing these costs by better qualifying potential resources is the goal of Auspace which in conjunction with the CSIRO and the Australian Center for Remote Sensing is building a commercial satellite to do just that.

Called the Australian Resource Information and Environment Satellite (Aries-1), the satellite will be able to map the mineral composition of surface rock, dirt, sand and water in 100 different spectral frequencies.

Ted Stapinski, chairman of the Aries board, said an analogy of this is human perception where we use color to identify different materials. Although the system won�t say gold is at point x, as gold traces can be found almost anywhere, it will provide supporting information that geologists can use to qualify sites before determining where to send ground and aircraft surveys teams.

"A typical test bore can be up to $1 million, so there is a strong demand for better ways of qualifying sites before spending money on ground surveys and test bores," said Stapinski.

Auspace from the beginning of the project has worked closely with the mining industry to make sure the satellite and applications they are developing will be of commercial benefit.

Stapinski says there are also a wide range of non-mining uses from pollution and environmental monitoring to crop and forestry management. In the case of crops, the data returned from a satellite like Aries can be used to further enhance yield predication and the whole area of precision farming - which aims to reduce water and chemical use by targeting their application to the farms areas that actually need it.

The final product of Aries won�t be raw data says Stapinski. "We are not selling data, but rather information products such as mineral and forest maps."

This will create demand for experienced technical people in a wide variety of areas including mapping and survey application development, image processing and geologists with broad computing skills. Currently the Aries project has about 30 people working on it, but Stapinski expects this to rise to about 150 when the satellite is fully operational around 2001.

Not only will these jobs be largely based in Australia, says Stapinski, but up to 80% of sales will be for international customers. Underscoring once again the importance of space services for generating export dollars.

"Space projects can be totally commercial, and Aries is showing that Australian space is a commercial business, and there is no reason why additional projects cannot be developed," said Stapinski.

At the other of the space industry is the launch industry, the part of the business that really puts a nation in the drivers seat of tomorrow�s space age.

In Australia there have been ongoing attempts to entice overseas rocket companies to launch from Australia. However, the Cape York and Darwin projects have stalled with little chance of them reaching fruition following problems for several of the Asian underwriters of the project - two of which are now only partly insolvent.

But another group from the US, Kistler Aerospace might change all that following a recent decision by the company to undertake the majority of its test development program at Woomera, 500 kilometers north of Adelaide.

Kistler is developing a two-stage fully reusable rocket called the K-1, that will be used to support the growing launch market for low earth orbit satellites. Financed by a select group of investors, K-1 is expected to be the first fully privately developed rocket. At this stage the K-1 is expected to cost around $US500 million to fund development of two test vehicles and conduct four to six test launches.

Initially, Kistler planned to conduct its test program in Nevada, but has come under pressure from the Nevada state government and the US Federal Aviation Commission to find alternate site with more room for error should something go wrong.

Kistler then began looking at the Woomera site, as not only an ideal test site, but possibly as a second launch center for commercial operations. As such, Australia early next decade could see Woomera being reopened with monthly and possibly fortnightly launches of the K-1.