[ad_1]
The Australian Space Agency will be able to take over the management of a galactic probe from its US counterpart within ten years, said CSIRO Chairman Larry Marshall while announcing a new $ 35 million investment in space technology research and artificial intelligence.
The new investments, announced Monday morning, are the latest CSIRO – funded "science platforms of the future" and involve $ 16 million for space technologies, which will fund equipment, employ more people, and will be able to provide more money. students and postdoctoral researchers in the field and will fund collaborations with the industry, and $ 19 million for an AI platform and machine learning.
Investment in AI seeks to improve prediction and understanding of complex data; develop platforms to enable reliable inferences and risk-based decisions; and data systems that enable ethical, robust and scalable IA.
It will target solutions in areas such as food safety and quality, health and well-being, sustainable energy and resources, resilient and valuable environments, and Australian and regional safety.
Other upcoming scientific initiatives include hydrogen energy systems, which have achieved a major breakthrough in fueling two cars with hydrogen derived from ammonia, a process that would allow the gas to be transported safely for the first time.
Publicity
The Australian Space Agency, set up in July under the leadership of Megan Clark, former director of CSIRO, aims to triple the size of the Australian space industry to $ 12 billion by 2030.
Marshall said CSIRO's $ 16 million investment would look for areas in which Australia had an "unfair advantage" because of its existing expertise.
"Launching a space probe these days is a routine, but it's hard to handle something once on the moon or on Mars," he said.
"But we have been working in the mining sector for a long time, we have developed robotic underground mining for BHP, so we are very efficient in dealing with hostile and inhospitable environments."
Space pioneers
CSIRO 's "Space Road Map", published in September, aims to launch regular shuttles with robots to the Moon by the 2030s.
In the meantime, Marshall said Australia is able to take the lead in Earth observation.
"The execution of data management, control systems and reliability for a space mission would place us on the world stage, it would be a great sign of trust between Australia and NASA, and I think it can happen early in the next decade, "he said. .
Another short-term possibility is that CSIRO researchers are using laser technology to revolutionize data capture from space.
"Between all our radio telescopes and what we already do with NASA, we get 2 terabytes of data per second, but we could increase this number by ten using light and optics rather than radio waves," he said. said Dr. Marshall.
Interplanetary missions
CSIRO's expertise in mining could eventually become a key player in maintaining interplanetary missions. The agency is already working on the transformation of lunar dust into metallic inks so that the spare parts of the probes can be printed in 3D on site.
The mining of water, oxygen and fuel from the moon for man-made expeditions, expected from the 2030s, was also part of the CSIRO road on which the new $ 16 million platform would work.
"The great benefit of inventing a predicted future, which forms the basis of our future scientific platforms, is that if you are right, you will be the only one to come up with a solution when that happens," said Dr. Marshall.
CSIRO's "pure science" budget, represented by future science platforms, already stood at $ 50 million a year before the latest investments, compared with $ 8 million a year before Dr. Marshall joined the organization in 2015, he said.
Pure research had been funded by the growth of intellectual property revenues and patent fees by 50% during this period, as well as by industry growth and global revenues of 20%, the "2020 strategy". "Dr. Marshall reinforcing the focus on commercialization of discoveries. .
[ad_2]
Source link
