Rural Southland paddock could see NZ get share of booming space industry

A rural paddock in Southland could be the answer to New Zealand getting a share of the booming global space industry.

International companies tracking their satellites are using the satellite ground station in Awarua.

But now the site is growing so fast, it’s now a registered company and a multimillion-dollar business.

“[I’m] pretty excited, actually rather a lot excited,” Robin McNeill from Space Operations NZ said.

“We are purely civilian and commercial so it’s everything from high-speed internet to low-speed internet... We've got some customers who are tracking containers [and] we've got others who are imaging the Earth every day.”

The site monitors satellites in low orbit roughly 600 kilometres away.

It started out small 15 years ago, with just one dish for the European and French space agencies after being gifted to regional development and tourism organisation Venture Southland, now Great South, in 2008.

Since then, its list of clients is growing and its revenue has doubled year-on-year.

Just before the Covid-19 outbreak, there were more than 24 antennae, which ballooned to 35 in just over a year. More are expected by Christmas.

“We've got three really big ones to go in in the next month and another two before Christmas that depends on shipping to New Zealand, and a few more next year - and we've got negotiations for even more,” McNeill said.

“We'll have to buy some more land soon, I think.”

The station's vital for US data and weather forecasting company Spire.

“When they pass over New Zealand, we get the data very quickly. If we didn't have that station, we would have to wait for the satellite to pass over another ground station and that could be 20 or 30 minutes later ... 20 or 30 minutes means a big deal in weather forecasting,” said Dallas Masters.

“It means that data can flow into weather forecasting systems and can improve those weather models.”

It’s important too for our own space export Rocket Lab, which relies on the site to keep track of its launches.

“If you haven't got communications then you don't know what you've got. So, it's always a very, very tense moment when your spacecraft or rocket goes into the dark and comes back an hour later and it's either there or it's not there,” chief executive Peter Beck said.

The space industry globally is worth around $460.40 billion and expected to be $1 trillion by 2030.

Places like Southland playing a major part in that growth.

“That tracking station is quite a little gem for the whole of the space industry. It's a very unique location, there's not many places on the planet where you can get elevations in the Southern Hemisphere like that,” McNeill said.

“I struggle to sleep at night thinking about the great things we can do.” 

Space Operations NZ hopes expanding their operations in other parts of the country will soon be on the horizon.

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