From 29 September–3 October 2025, Sydney will host the world’s biggest space conference, the International Astronautical Congress (IAC). This is more than a photo-op for Australian Space Agency (ASA) officials and their counterparts at NASA; it’s a chance for Australia to position itself as a critical partner in the emerging space economy. Even as America appears ever more insular, it continues to share an unprecedented level of high-security technology with its closest allies, Australia and the UK, through the AUKUS partnership.

While the AUKUS security pact is best known for helping Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines—and the diplomatic rupture it caused with France when we cancelled our diesel-electric submarine contract with them—its real significance lies in opening the door to broader sharing of sensitive technologies. If Australia’s civilian space sector is savvy, they’ll seize the opportunity afforded by AUKUS to extend our collaboration beyond nuclear submarines into commercial rockets and satellites.

Space is no longer the preserve of big governments and scientific missions. Satellites now underpin huge parts of the global economy, from the provision of fast internet anywhere in the world, to logistics and supply-chain tracking, climate forecasting, and precision agriculture. Rising demand for these applications has helped drive rocket launch costs down dramatically. Sending payload on one of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rockets now costs around $1,500/kg, down more than seventy percent from NASA’s most economical Apollo-era rocket, the Saturn V. In the process, the broader space industry has grown to US$630 billion and McKinsey has estimated that the sector will be worth $1.8 trillion by 2035.

And under President Donald Trump, space is getting even more funding and attention. In his 2024 inauguration address, he went as far as to say that Mars is America’s manifest destiny. To be fair, he says a lot of stuff. And he’s probably less focused on rockets now after his falling-out with Elon Musk. Nevertheless, it’s hard to ignore the increasing importance of the space industry for our future.

Australia’s civil space sector is growing rapidly, admittedly from a low base. Cheaper launch costs have opened the door for smaller players like us to access space. Still, regulatory restrictions, especially those tied to American export and technology control laws like the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) remain a major handbrake for space start-ups around the world.

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The intention of ITAR is to ensure critical US military technologies don’t fall into the wrong hands. But these controls are heavy-handed. Even components, designs, and software that entail very limited security risks often require lengthy licence negotiations or are entirely off-limits. This drives up costs, slows time to market, and adds uncertainty, meaning in practice the majority of space companies prefer to start in the US, or move there once they get off the ground.

On the surface, this might seem like it benefits America, but there are a couple of ways it doesn’t. First, ITAR makes it hard for American firms to hire foreign nationals, shrinking the talent pool available to the US space industry. Second, it makes it tricky for American firms to expand their operations overseas to countries like Australia whose favourable launch conditions and local talent make it an obvious place to relieve some of the pressure on the Texas–Florida launch corridor.

But last year there was a surprise opening for space industry collaboration. In August 2024, as part of AUKUS, the US Department of State determined Australia and the UK had export-control regimes “comparable” to its own, enabling an ITAR exemption to come into effect. This exemption, Section 126.7 of the regulations, allows many defence articles, technical data, and related services to move between the three countries without the usual case-by-case US licences that would otherwise be required.

The carve-out was driven by the needs of the nuclear submarine program and related high-sensitivity technology transfers, yet it establishes a clear precedent: in areas where the strategic benefits to the US and their closest allies are strongly aligned, it’s possible to secure an ITAR exemption without needing to relitigate the entire legislative framework through Congress. Australia could push to extend that principle to civilian space technologies.

We’ve already proved a critical partner for the US military in space. While Pine Gap, the joint Australia–US intelligence operation in Alice Springs, gets all the attention (including as the subject of a Netflix drama), the Harold Holt naval communication station in Exmouth, Western Australia has quietly become our most important piece of shared defence infrastructure. Its very low frequency transmitters—thirteen towers, some of which are nearly 400 metres tall—can send messages to submarines deep underwater, a capability only possible in places with wide open coastlines and minimal radio noise, like Australia’s west coast. This same base has since been expanded to provide capability to the US Space Force. The C-band space surveillance radar and the optical Space Surveillance Telescope are now also located in WA to give the US coverage over the southern skies that it cannot get from its own territory.

Australia’s unique position on the globe also has major benefits for launching rockets into space, especially given the relatively short distance from our Top End (in the Northern Territory) to the top of the sky, and our abundance of clear, uncrowded skies. Gilmour Space Technologies is currently developing its Eris orbital launch vehicle, intended to carry about 300 kg to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), launched from its Bowen Orbital Spaceport in North Queensland. Gilmour has built a 10,000m² advanced manufacturing facility in Yatala and has a workforce of around 200. While its maiden flight (Eris-1) in mid-2025 ended in failure after only fourteen seconds, it represented a breakthrough in Australia’s ability to reach space without direct assistance from our allies.

And then there’s space mining. Once a fantasy, this is now serious business. Interlune, a startup by former engineers at Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s space company, has announced plans to mine helium-3 on the Moon’s surface. Helium-3, useful in quantum computing and nuclear fusion, could soon prove valuable enough to justify a roundtrip from Earth to the Moon.

Australians already know how to run large-scale mines in remote, unpopulated areas. ASA has been investing in companies like Fleet Space Technologies in Adelaide, which raised AU$150 million to develop its ExoSphere system —blending nanosatellites, subsurface sensors, and AI to map mineral systems on Earth, with applications that could eventually extend to resource exploration in space. There’s also AROSE (Australian Remote Operations for Space and Earth), a Perth-based consortium working to establish Australia as the trusted leader in remote operations, robotics, and resource extraction in extreme environments.

But much more could be done to ready our mining sector to collaborate with future space resource ventures. Building on the expertise of our most competitive global industry, Australia could position itself as a key supplier and rule-setter for lunar and asteroid mining—not just in the engineering of extraction systems, but in shaping the commercial standards and governance for how space resources are accessed and shared.

In game theory terms, space exploration is like a stag hunt: hunters can chase a rabbit alone for a small payoff, or coordinate to bring down a stag for far greater rewards. Exploring the frontiers of space requires huge investments of risk-tolerant capital. However, ITAR in its current form keeps American firms and their prospective Australian partners from pooling our talent and capital.

An extension of the ITAR exemption would be a huge win for both countries. The recent Section 126.7 carve-out was framed entirely around defence needs. Expanding its scope to

explicitly cover commercial space technologies—satellite buses, robotics, propulsion parts, ground-station hardware—would give both US and Australian firms the confidence they need for bilateral investment to start flowing. In space, ambition isn’t the problem—uncertainty is. Remove it and Australia can help America’s space industry go further, faster.