From the Magazine: ARIANESPACE INCREASES ENGAGEMENT WITH AUSTRALIAN INDUSTRY

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. For Editorial Inquiries Contact: Editor Kym Bergmann at [email protected] For Advertising Inquiries Contact: Director of Sales Graham Joss at [email protected]