Placing a military communications satellite weighing several tonnes in geostationary orbit 35,786km above the earth’s surface is no mean feat. There are only a handful of producers of rockets of this scale – and those from China and Russia are completely off the agenda for reasons of national security. Of the remainder, the company that has been most active in Australia – by far – is Arianespace.
Vivian Quenet, Arianespace’s Managing Director and Head of Sales for the Asia Pacific region provided an update to APDR during a recent visit to Australia, explaining that further discussions have taken place with local companies about possible collaboration. On previous occasions he has been unable to go into detail for commercial-in-confidence reasons, but now elaborated, describing the broader picture and some interesting opportunities:
“Arianespace is owned by the Ariane Group – which is also very active in Australia. The company has three telescopes here that are used for space situational awareness – particularly the search for debris that can damage or even destroy satellites. They can also search for unfriendly satellites that might be trying to get close to one of your own in geostationary orbit.
“France has experienced that problem – and it is becoming more common. This is leading to the creation of “Bulldog” satellites which are designed to protect the main asset from unwelcome attention.
“Another initiative is the development of a re-entry test capsule that could land at Woomera and which is designed to test re-entry speeds. At the moment ESA’s re-entry capability is limited to about 8km per second, but there is an interest to raising that to 11km per second – which is about the speed of an object returning from further out in space, for example from the moon.
This is an excerpt from APDR. To read the full story, click here.
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French-Australian space cooperation would be a useful addition to Australia’s long range military missile prospects. This would be an alternative or lever to Australia’s current North Qld Launch Base reliance on the US DoD and NASA.
It is significant that civilian ArieneSpace’s military associate is French ArianeGroup which designed France’s latest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M51_(missile) SLBM – basically a submarine launched ICBM.
Going back to the early 1960s a past generation of French dual civilian-military rocket/missile technologists, working for Dassault, assisted Israel with the Jericho MRBM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho_(missile) and Israel’s satellite launch industry.
Continuing French assitance has developed into Israel’s:
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho_(missile)#Jericho_III ICBM and the
– Shavit II space launch vehicle, which, launched in Israel, can deploy large Geo-Stationary satellites.
Australia is already experiencing the US’s typical mixed-message, preachy political, decision not to supply Virginia SSNs. This signals that Australia cannot rely on the US to assist in the more politically difficult Australian nuclear weapon capability.
However Israel and France’s nuclear weapon industry (less reliant on US Anglosphere direction) might assist an Australian ICBM and submarine hypersonic missile program.
Australia can barter secure re-entry landing services at Woomera, other space observation facilities, submarine communication facilities and Uranium as part “payment” for French-Israeli assistance.
Thanks. Very interesting thoughts.