Space Why Earth observations matter to Australia

Over decades, Australia has provided scientific support and technical innovation to the international Earth observation (EO) community. The free and open benefits of this ongoing support are enjoyed by all Australians, industry, and international partners.

• Due to Australia’s size and sparse population, EO is particularly important to us as a nation. It provides the best means to regularly ‘take the pulse’ of our land, marine and Antarctic jurisdiction.
• EO is central to our everyday life, delivering benefits to communities, the environment and our businesses. Data uses include information on crop and ecosystem health and supporting response during natural disasters such as bushfire, cyclone and flood.
• EO is also increasingly vital to other nations, and to the Indo-Pacific in particular. As they engage with topics such as climate change adaptation, data is critical to understanding change. The ability of our neighbours, and the global community generally, to tackle these challenges effectively is central to our mutual stability, sustainability and growth.
• Find out more Earth observation from space

DEA Surface Reflectance - Sentinel-2 - 2019-09-09 - Yamba, NSW Sentinel-2 image side-by-side comparison of a bushfire at Yamba, NSW in September, 2019. The first image shows false colour including short-wave infrared (SWIR), revealing the extent of the fire front. The second image is its true colour. © Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia) 2021. Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO doi: dx.doi.org/10.26186/146552

DEA Surface Reflectance - Sentinel-2 - 2019-09-09 - Yamba, NSW Sentinel-2 image side-by-side comparison of a bushfire at Yamba, NSW in September, 2019. The first image shows false colour including short-wave infrared (SWIR), revealing the extent of the fire front. The second image is its true colour. © Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia) 2021. Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO doi: dx.doi.org/10.26186/146552

Australia’s Earth observation capability

Australia has been an active user of EO since the 1970s, when the Australian Landsat Station was established in Alice Springs, to provide the third link in a global network of satellite ground stations. This ground station allows the US Geological Survey (USGS) Mission Operation Centre located at NASA, to send command and control signals to Landsat satellites via the facility at Alice Springs, as well as receive satellite telemetry information and provide ‘state of health’ monitoring.

In addition to the room for ground stations and infrastructure, Australia’s size, diversity and stability provides a unique offering to the global EO community.

Our vast continent with its varying biomes – extensive coastlines, deserts, temperate forests, rainforests, rugged bushland and mountains – provides us with challenging environmental diversity to test new data applications.

We have the technical and scientific leadership to offer a unique capability to our international and scientific partners in EO and calibration and validation, positioning Australia to become a global leader for testing and quality assurance in satellite EO missions.

Geoscience Australia provides freely available, high quality EO data and world-leading products.

• Geoscience Australia has a global reputation as an advanced and sophisticated user of EO, putting the data to work for the benefit of the community in increasingly innovative ways. Because of this, Australia is regarded as a partner of choice for those developing new EO science and applications, such as those made freely available through Digital Earth Australia.
• We have pioneered world leading technologies that have ‘changed the game’ in how EO is used. This includes the Digital Earth Australia platform, which puts decades of satellite imagery in the hands of innovators - at no cost, and with easy-to-use tools. This was thought impossible only a decade ago.
• In addition, we have also leveraged our capability to support our neighbours. For example, Australia has established a regional data hub serving South-East Asia and the Pacific with trusted EO.