WA-owned satellite to launch in India

A small Perth firm will become one of the first Western Australian companies to build and launch a satellite into space after locking in federal funding.

LatConnect60 on Tuesday was awarded $5.8 million under a federal international space investment program to build a low earth orbit satellite which it will launch from India.

The satellite will capture high resolution carbon emissions information and aims to reduce the cost of access to data about methane and carbon dioxide for the agriculture and resources sectors.

LatConnect 60 chief executive Venkat Pillay said the technology onboard its satellite would provide resolution five times greater than what was available on the market at present.

“LatConnect 60 has garnered significant interest from the oil and gas sector for its emissions monitoring solutions, having received investment from Deleum, a publicly listed O&G services company that is actively working with LatConnect60 in the South East Asian Oil and Gas market,” he said.

“This mission is an essential step not only in the delivery of the LatConnect 60 constellation concept, but also enabling LatConnect 60 to work more closely with the Australian Space Agency, as well as its Australian and Indian partners, leveraging India’s Space Ecosystem, in the creation and use of significant technology and skills in Australia.

“Our key partnership with our launch partner in India, Skyroot Aerospace, will… enable government and commercial end users to have access to the leading datasets.”

Mr Pillay said this would be the first of a constellation of low earth orbit satellites collecting near real-time data.

The first WA-built satellite was completed by Curtin University’s Space Science and Technology Centre in 2021 and launched into orbit onboard a SpaceX rocket to test performance of new image capture technology.

Australia’s space collaboration with India comes off the back of the subcontinent’s successful Chandrayaan-3 mission to the moon in 2023, done so at a fraction of the cost of previous efforts from other nations.

Federal Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic said the partnership was mutually beneficial.

“The innovations that will be developed as part of these projects are going to help address some of our greatest challenges of today like climate change, while also driving gains in areas like advanced manufacturing and artificial intelligence that will promote a Future Made in Australia,” he said. 

Australia India Institute chief executive Lisa Singh said both nations held untapped potential as space partners.

Lat Connect 60 has also received state government support for its technology.