Space and Australia: opportunities in the second Trump administration
21 Jan 2025|

Enhancing space cooperation between Australia and the United States should be a priority for Canberra in the second Trump administration. In defence terms, that could include strengthening collaboration between the US and Australia in space domain awareness and through collaboration on space control. Leveraging locally developed space capability through assured government support of Australia’s commercial space sector is also important, as is sovereign space launch to ensure space access, resilience and ultimately deterrence by denial in space.

Space is likely to be a greater priority for the incoming Trump administration than the previous Biden administration, particularly given guidance in Project 2025. First, the Trump administration will seek to get NASA’s Artemis program back on trajectory after continued delays have seen the initial goal of a lunar landing in 2024 pushed back to 2027, while promoting rapid growth of the commercial space sector. Second, expansion of the US Space Force—established by Trump in 2019—to respond to growing counterspace threats by China and Russia is highly likely, again in line with Project 2025.

Trump’s inauguration speech talked of ‘planting the US flag on Mars’, suggesting he has also endorsed Elon Musk’s SpaceX-led prioritisation of getting humans on the Martian surface as early as 2029. However, if this focus on Mars becomes the centrepiece of US space policy, it will draw the US’s attention away from the Moon, potentially handing the lead in any effort to return to the lunar surface  over to China. Trump therefore needs to delicately manage this approach, as well as Musk’s role and ambitions.

Australia supports the United States’ Artemis project and is set to send a lunar rover to the Moon by 2026. With Trump likely to fast-track Artemis, Australian commercial space companies should be supported by the government to play a larger and more visible role in Artemis. For example, Australian-built small satellites could be delivered to lunar orbit to support surface activities, taking advantage of sovereign space launch to maximise Australia’s direct role in Artemis.

In terms of space and defence, there will be new opportunities for the ADF to increase its role in space. Australia should consider how the ADF can practically support the US Space Force if it takes a more proactive approach to the mission of space control in response to Chinese and Russian anti-satellite threats. Once again, sovereign space launch can play a key role in this new mission for the ADF in space.

While Australia has embraced a more sophisticated approach to the space domain in defence policy, the Albanese government has made significant cuts to investment into space, and lacks a national space strategy to guide Australian space activities. With a federal election looming, the winning party will need to reverse that drift in space policy and clearly commit to supporting civil and defence space activities, including in collaboration with the US and other partners. That will be particularly important as the Trump administration adopts a more ambitious approach in space. Australia must step up and increase its burden-share in orbit.

On the civil side, a good place to start would be the preparation and release of a national space strategy that guides future space activities and investment as a whole-of-nation enterprise. That could also see the Australian Space Agency become a statutory agency, supported by a dedicated minister for space policy (as has been done in New Zealand).

Australia’s space policy agenda must include building greater opportunities for small and medium enterprises, including to support international space activities such as Artemis. Sovereign space launch should play a key role, but small-satellite manufacturing and ground-based elements must also be fully supported. The goal should be an end-to-end space ecosystem that offers growth and stability to space enterprises, ending years of drift and uncertainty. That would also enable the civil and commercial space sectors to support defence requirements with locally developed capabilities.

Australia also needs continuing and closer cooperation with the US on both space domain awareness and collaboration towards developing common space control capabilities to protect Australian and US satellites in orbit. Space control will demand practical capability both on the Earth’s surface and, where necessary, in orbit to actively defend against counterspace threats. Space domain awareness is an essential starting point for space control, but practical effectors are needed to counter actual threats. Australia should support the development of such a capability, perhaps under Pillar 2 of AUKUS.

Finally, a major part of space control is assured access to space. It is important for government to support the development of sovereign space launch capabilities—both Australian launch sites and locally developed launch vehicles—to allow Australia and its allies to maintain resilient and survivable space support to terrestrial forces. The ability to rapidly deploy small satellites to augment existing capability, or reconstitute lost capability after an adversary attack, reinforces space resilience and strengthens space deterrence by denial. In the next National Defence Strategy, to be released in 2026, sovereign space launch provided by commercial companies needs to be explicitly declared as an important capability for ADF space policy.