After months of fierce competition between Australian states vying to host the headquarters of the new Australian Space Agency, the Australian Prime Minister has formally announced that South Australia has won the bid and its capital city, Adelaide, will host Australia’s newest federal agency at the reinvigorated site of the old Royal Adelaide Hospital.
While passionate space advocates in other states around the nation might be disappointed that their city (or Canberra) wasn’t selected, the decision is a welcome one. As of today all of Australia’s states and territories can put aside their geographical differences and return to national cohesion and contributing to a collaborative space community.
Today is the birth of an Australian space federation and we can finally discuss how to leverage independent state strengths to create a modern and world-leading international space industry. A space agency based in Adelaide will supercharge the city’s ability to grow its local sector. With booming companies such as Nova Systems, Fleet Space Technologies, Neumann Space, and Myriota, there is no doubting that Adelaide has the ingredients for an innovation ecosystem geared towards space.
This should not come as a concern to other states, though. As we detailed recently, almost every state and territory has a legitimate and competitive reason to bid for the space agency headquarters. The ecosystems belonging to those states will not suffer from HQ being elsewhere. In fact, prior to any indication of an Australian space agency, we founded Moonshot with the belief that today the average person has the ability to access and leverage space, and space agencies aren’t entirely necessary, but they are helpful.
Over the past couple of years we have been establishing an extensive national framework. We have been growing Australia’s national space capability, within a powerful international network, to help cultivate each of Australia’s states and territories as global space industry leaders of the 21st century.
In fact, today we have a formal partnership with the Victorian government, a signed memorandum of understanding with the NSW government, and we are in active negotiations with the Queensland and South Australian governments to supercharge each of their existing space ecosystems.
Within a year, Moonshot intends to be working closely with the Australian Space Agency, every state government, and ecosystem stakeholders around the country to do what we do best — grow a strong space capability through thriving ecosystems.
Settling the location of the Australian Space Agency HQ provides the certainty for all states to move forward confidently and collaboratively.
Troy McCann
During university, where he studied computer science and electrical engineering, Troy mixed his passions for technology and entrepreneurship through multiple engineering-heavy businesses. Using his experiences in commercialising deep research and the space industry, Troy began to develop a framework for supporting the growth of commercial solutions to humanity’s most difficult challenges while assembling a community around it, forming the basis for Moonshot.
Troy was ranked the 4th most influential new space business leader of the industry in the NewSpace People Global Ranking Report for 2019.
