Selected CSIRO media mentions for the week commencing 6 April. If you encounter a paywall, request a text version by emailing the article title here.
Mining on the Moon the next space race in the bid to explore the final frontier – As technology advances amid the race to send people to Mars, scientists and corporations are exploring how the Moon can be mined. Here is a breakdown of some of the physical, environmental, legal and ethical challenges involved in Moon mining, according to a scientist, an engineer, a lawyer and an archaeologist… ABC Online, 9 April 2026 (link, text below).
CSIRO exits food manufacturing, precision fermentation research – Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, has proposed cutting up to 52 net roles from its Agriculture and Food division and exiting food ingredient innovation, precision fermentation, microbial technologies, and its national food innovation network – changes the food tech sector says leave a significant gap… by Kim Berry. Food and Drink Business, 7 April 2026 (link, text below).
Fifty years of measuring the world’s cleanest air – Australia marks 50 years of monitoring the world’s cleanest air in remote northwest Tasmania at Kennaook / Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station, supporting global efforts to track human-driven changes to the atmosphere… Phys.org, 1 April 2026 (link, text only).
This lens can concentrate sunlight and turn it into green hydrogen, effectively ‘beaming’ energy down – The “Land Down Under” is taking renewable energy potential to a whole other level. Known for its vast, bright, and sunny landscapes, this backdrop has become the perfect canvas for unique green infrastructure… Energies Media, 7 April 2026 (link, text below).
‘Incredible discoveries’: CSIRO reveals 110+ new species in Coral Sea – CSIRO and a global alliance working to speed up the discovery of ocean life have found more than 110 new fish and invertebrate species in the mysterious deep waters of the Coral Sea Marine Park – with more than 200 species expected to be identified in total… Cape York Weekly, 5 April 2026 (link, text below).
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ABC Online, 9 April 2026
As technology advances amid the race to send people to Mars, scientists and corporations are exploring how the Moon can be mined.
Here is a breakdown of some of the physical, environmental, legal and ethical challenges involved in Moon mining, according to a scientist, an engineer, a lawyer and an archaeologist.
In short
As technology advances amid the race to send people to Mars, scientists and corporations are exploring how the Moon could be mined.
Scientists say the first step is understanding what resources are actually there.
What’s next?
Before mining on the Moon can advance there are technological challenges that need to be overcome, as well as ethical, legal and environmental considerations.
Since Neil Armstrong took his giant step for mankind onto the Moon almost 60 years ago, small samples from the lunar surface have been brought back to Earth.
The samples provide a glimpse into what minerals are in the lunar regolith and missions such as Artemis II provide greater understanding of the Moon’s environment.
As technology advances amid the race to send people to Mars, scientists and corporations are exploring how the Moon can be mined.
Here is a breakdown of some of the physical, environmental, legal and ethical challenges involved in Moon mining, according to a scientist, an engineer, a lawyer and an archaeologist.
First steps for extracting resources
CSIRO Mineral Resources senior principal research scientist Jonathon Ralston has been involved in developing mining technology for the Moon and Mars.
He says the first step is to gain an understanding of the environment in a similar way to how prospecting and exploration digs are conducted before resource extraction on Earth.
“And the exciting thing is we’ve been there a couple of times with the Apollo missions but there’s so much more to learn about the Moon and there’s a lot of unknown uncertainties,” Dr Ralston said.
“When people use this term ‘mining on the Moon’, it’s really much more closer to scientific exploration to understand what the local resources are there first before we can then start doing exciting things.”
Sophia Casanova is an Australian scientist based in Europe who designs surface missions for ispace, a private company that aims to transport payloads to the Moon or lunar orbit.
She said the technology that would enable mining on the Moon was still in its infancy, though companies were sending small components of the eventual process chain into space.
Looking for ground truth
In 2019, 50 years after the first Apollo mission landed on the Moon, NASA re-examined its lunar samples.
“They’ve been studied extensively to understand what the actual materials are and there’s been a lot of work with people then basically creating analogues of those materials so they could do testing here on Earth,” Dr Ralston said.
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“The other aspect is there’s been lots of orbital satellite technologies scanning the Moon for its composition. But what we’re really looking for now is that ground truth.
“We want to have more ground-based missions that can do that calibration, and validation techniques so we can really understand what the material is in the moon, both on the surface and the subsurface, so that we can then make good decisions about what ways might we best make use of those resources to basically support mission activities.”
Minerals in the regolith
Analysis of the lunar regolith has shown it is made up of about 50 per cent silica, along with a range of trace metals and other minerals.
Some missions have identified ice in regions on the Moon that are never touched by the Sun.
With American sights set on visiting the moon again, NASA prepares to open a restricted lab full of moon rocks — some of which have never been exposed to the Earth’s atmosphere.
“There’s a very, very excited group of people with the prospect of basically water ice on the Moon, which is a fantastic resource that could be utilised for both life support and also propulsion systems for the hydrogen and the oxygen as well,” Dr Ralston said.
NASA estimates there are a million tonnes of helium-3 — an isotope rare on Earth — on the Moon.
Rare earth metals, which are used in smartphones, computers and advanced technologies, are also present on the Moon, including scandium, yttrium and the 15 lanthanides, according to research by Boeing.
A private company based in Seattle, Interlune, is aiming to be the first US company to commercialise resources from space, starting with helium-3 from the Moon.
Helium-3 is used as a coolant, including in cryogenics, making it useful for data storage.
Dr Ralston said opinion was divided on whether helium-3 was present in a high enough concentration and that the big challenge would be developing methods to recover it and transport it back to Earth.
Dr Casanova said a lot of the focus was on understanding what the environment was like on the lunar south pole.
“So it’s still quite a way off from any sort of extraction-level processes or big processes,” she said.
“The technologies are very small demonstrations. We’re still very constrained by the power and energy that’s required for these technologies and the harshness of the space environment.”
One of the other major minerals on the lunar surface is ilmenite, which is very rich in oxygen. There are also metals, including iron and titanium, that could be extracted.
A petrol station in space?
When people refer to resource extraction on the Moon, they generally do not mean to say that the materials would be brought back to Earth, but rather would be used in space.
Water is important because it can be separated into its components — hydrogen and oxygen — which can then be used as propellant or fuel for spacecraft.
The race to land on the moon has started again, with countries like India and Russia eyeing the Moon’s resources. Here’s what we know about past Moon landings, and what future missions will focus on.
“Essentially a petrol-station-in-space kind of concept — and a necessary one if we’re looking [at] sending humans to Mars or for deeper space operations in the long-term,” Dr Casanova said.
The lunar surface was a very challenging environment to operate in, Dr Casanova said, due to massive swings in temperature, and the material itself posed design challenges.
“The regolith material itself is very sharp, abrasive, and kicks up a lot of dust, which can interfere with the engineering design of all the functionality of the rovers,” she said.
Rovers — remote-controlled vehicles designed to travel on the Moon’s surface — have gathered information to help scientists better understand how to address the complexities of operating in such a harsh environment.
Dr Casanova said there were a lot of technological advances needed before any significant mining could be carried out on the Moon.
“There’s a lot of challenges when it comes to resource-specific questions and technologies, because these technologies that we use on Earth, they’re big, they’re heavy, they’re power-hungry, they can be less precise and they’re not as constrained,” she said.
Protecting the Moon
Space archaeologist Alice Gorman has been working on how to protect the lunar environment.
She said there had been increasing interest in resource extraction from the Moon.
“It’s unfortunately a little bit similar to the Cold War space race,” Dr Gorman said.
“There’s an amount of national prestige involved in sending a surface mission and in successfully getting data or demonstrating that you’re a little bit closer to lunar mining.
“A lot of the motivations for going to the Moon to mine are not actually about the ability to use resources or a commitment to lunar science.
“One of the concerns is that commercial operations will actually destroy the science that needs to be carried out.”
If all goes well for NASA’s Artemis II mission, the astronauts aboard could fly the furthest that humans have ever gone. What should we be looking out for?
She said it was paramount to have a thorough understanding of the impacts resource extraction would have on the Moon to prevent it from being irreversibly harmed.
“On Earth we’re used to environments renewing themselves, bouncing back,” Dr Gorman said.
“You can still cause incredible environmental harm, but we also have a sort of faith that rivers will keep flowing, vegetation will grow back and ecosystems can recover.
“But on the Moon it’s not like that — processes are completely different, they happen at different timescales and we don’t understand what are the longer-term impacts of moving lunar dust.
“One thing a number of lunar scientists have agreed is that it would be possible to move enough dust up into orbit around the moon, so there would be a dust cloud around the Moon.”
If that happened, it could have catastrophic consequences for animals on Earth that depend on moonlight, such as some species of owl and marine turtles, she said.
Dr Casanova and Dr Ralston agree that lunar mining will be different to terrestrial mining and that caution is needed.
“When we talk about extracting resources on the Moon, it’s not big trucks that are just picking up rock — we have to be very careful with this environment, so there will not be big coal trucks kicking up material and dust and everything,” Dr Casanova said.
“There will be very precise movements, very precise activities to extract these resources, very little disturbance.”
From the Moon to Mars
Mining on Earth almost always involves large amounts of water and energy.
But on the Moon there is no carbon and no liquid water.
“The very challenges that we need to address to do processing of resources on the Moon are exactly the kind of technologies we also need here right on Earth as well,” Dr Ralston said.
The astronauts have travelled further from Earth than any humans before, capturing never-before-seen views of the far side of the Moon.
Dr Casanova said mining on the Moon involved the resources themselves, which could potentially be used to support ships travelling between Earth and Mars, the creation of new technology and learning how to live away from Earth.
“Being able to develop and operate in an environment that, although not completely analogous to Mars, has many similar constraints in terms of power, communications, living in an atmosphere-free environment without breathable oxygen,” she said.
Dr Casanova said the Moon would be a testing ground before humans progressed to Mars.
Legal and sovereignty issues
The Outer Space Treaty of 1967, developed by the United Nations and signed by the US, Russia and the UK, has nine main principles, including that the Moon be used exclusively for peaceful purposes.
It also states that outer space not be “subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means”.
There is also a clause stipulating that all areas of the Moon should be accessible to everyone.
But Dr Gorman said there were untested areas of ambiguity — for example, exclusion zones around mining areas.
“And of course there could be commercial in-confidence operations going on because there’s this huge emphasis now on private corporations and commercial operations for profit as a way to finance the science,” she said.
Dr Gorman said it was unclear how mining on the Moon meshed with the Outer Space Treaty.
Unlike in Australia, where there are laws governing mineral exploration and extraction, there are no explicit laws in place regarding the Moon because no nation has sovereignty over it.
NASA shakes up its Artemis Moon exploration program, adding an extra practice flight before a crewed lunar landing planned for two years’ time.
“There’s a lot of Moon and there’s a lot of south pole, so it would be possible for numerous nations or companies to be carrying out resource extraction and not ever overlap or come into conflict with each other,” Dr Gorman said.
“But what happens if they do? And what happens if the area somebody wants to mine is also one that scientists would like to preserve for future study?”
The UN developed a Moon Treaty in 1979.
But space lawyer Gregory Radisic said only 18 countries had ratified it and none of them had actually landed on the Moon.
“If you don’t have a rocket ship and you can’t go there, then that’s fine, you can sign anything you want, but you’re not really part of the party,” he said.
Mr Radisic, who is a fellow at For All Moonkind, a not-for-profit organisation that advocates for protection and the development of laws in space, explained that countries, including the US and the former USSR, agreed to a principle of non-appropriation during the 1960s.
“It is basically a legal doctrine saying no-one can own land on the Moon or any celestial body,” he said.
“But then you had all these Apollo missions, where it’s almost like mining was happening under the guise of scientific exploration and research, bringing back rock samples.”
The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs has a working group drafting legal aspects of space resource activities, but even if countries sign up to the recommended principles, once they are finalised, they are non-binding.
The draft principles include environmental assessments before any resource extraction, avoiding adverse changes to Earth and the harmful contamination of the Moon.
But given that much of the space race is being led by tech billionaires who tend to follow the Silicon Valley ethos of “move fast and break things”, it is unclear what would happen if private companies decided to ignore the draft principles, though they do put the onus on nations to take responsibility.
“It’s a fairly common opinion that the space barons or the space billionaires aren’t best placed to judge the ethical issues around lunar mining,” Dr Gorman said.
“When governments carry out these exercises, they are accountable to the public but private corporations are not.”
Space barons and billionaires
NASA and other space agencies are outsourcing a lot of their projects to private actors, such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin.
Dr Gorman said she was concerned about what that could mean for the future of the Moon.
“Your average space billionaire probably doesn’t give a rat’s arse about future generations,” she said.
“Elon Musk has set his sights on Mars, so are we going to sacrifice the Moon so that some of these space billionaires can conquer Mars in that old sort of colonialist way?”
In January, NASA and the US Department of Energy announced a renewed commitment to support the research and development of a nuclear fission surface power system for use on the Moon via the Artemis campaign and future missions to Mars.
Russia also plans to put a nuclear power plant on the moon in the next decade in order to supply its lunar space program and a joint Russian–Chinese research station.
International rules ban putting nuclear weapons in space but there are no bans on nuclear energy sources.
Mr Radisic said it was important to consider what impacts construction on the Moon might have back on Earth.
“Imagine you see a new moon and all of a sudden there’s a light flickering back at you,” he said.
“Even just from that cultural perspective, how does that change every child’s perspective of outer space once that starts happening?
“Same with heritage — what if we land a craft and all of a sudden Neil Armstrong’s first bootprint on the Moon is wiped away?
“How devastating would that be for humanity? Just so we can have a power source?”
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By Kim Berry. Food and Drink Business, 7 April 2026
Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, has proposed cutting up to 52 net roles from its Agriculture and Food division and exiting food ingredient innovation, precision fermentation, microbial technologies, and its national food innovation network – changes the food tech sector says leave a significant gap.
CSIRO has proposed withdrawing from food manufacturing and ingredient innovation research, precision fermentation, microbial technologies, and strain engineering as part of a major restructure of its Agriculture and Food (A&F) division, according to a consultation document presented to staff on 4 March 2026.
The proposal, which is subject to staff consultation, involves a net reduction of up to 52 roles from a current A&F headcount of 656. Up to 57 potential redundancies and three early term cessations are proposed, partially offset by eight new positions. The consultation period closed on 26 March, with final decisions expected from mid-April and implementation from May.
The restructure collapses the current five-program structure into four programs – Redesigning Genetics, Farm Productivity, Aquaculture, and AgriFood Systems – and eliminates the Food program entirely.
CSIRO said the Food program is “no longer viable based on implementation of strategic science shifts”, with remaining capability to be transitioned to other programs where relevant.
What is being exited
The science exits are substantial and directly relevant to the food manufacturing sector. The proposal formally exits: microbial technologies, strain engineering, and precision fermentation as applied to food ingredients and products; food manufacturing and ingredient innovation; and the national food innovation network, the Australian Food Innovation Network (AFIN), which CSIRO hosted as a platform connecting industry, universities, researchers and government.
The Sustainability and Food program – which housed these capabilities alongside sustainability research – will be restructured into an AgriFood Systems program with two groups: Bioeconomy and New Industries, and Agriculture and Food Security. Capability in soil chemistry, diet and health research, and data products will also be reduced.
CSIRO told a global food innovation community earlier this year that it had made “a strategic decision to exit work on food ingredients and food processing”.
The communication, seen by international food tech media, noted, “A potential exit from this research area creates an opportunity to refocus our efforts on areas where CSIRO can provide differentiated capability to deliver greater impact at scale”.
The Werribee site – home to CSIRO’s Food Innovation Centre, described on the agency’s own website as “the most significant and extensive food innovation expertise available to industry in Australia” – is flagged for potential future site viability review. The proposal notes headcount reductions there “may require a future evaluation of site viability” through a separate process.
Financial driver
CSIRO’s framing is clear: the restructure is driven by a structural funding shortfall, not by a judgment that the research is unimportant. Over 15 years, the agency’s government appropriation has grown at 1.3 per cent per year against average inflation of 2.7 per cent.
The agency says the costs of running a modern research organisation have escalated far faster, and many of its 800-plus facilities require critical repairs and maintenance. “If we are to continue doing the science the country needs, this is not sustainable”, the proposal states.
This is the second round of Agriculture and Food cuts in less than two years. In mid-2024, CSIRO confirmed at least 30 A&F research jobs were being cut as part of a broader agency-wide restructuring.
CSIRO chief executive, Doug Hilton, said at the time that “science priorities change, national priorities change” and the agency needed to refine capabilities toward its most impactful programs.
In November 2025, a further round of agency-wide cuts was announced, with the A&F division facing 45 to 55 role reductions as part of a broader 350-job reduction across CSIRO.
The government subsequently announced an additional $100 million for CSIRO’s annual budget, but the agency said this was unlikely to halt cuts, given a $280 million maintenance backlog.
What is being retained
CSIRO is emphatic that agriculture and food research broadly will continue as one of its largest divisions. The retained and growing areas include genetics and crop breeding (Redesigning Genetics program), digital farming systems, farm productivity, aquaculture, bioeconomy and new industries, and agrifood systems research focused on supply chains, climate adaptation and land use.
Eight new positions are proposed, including four roles in aquaculture biology, breeding, nutrition and production systems, and two in digital farm systems analysis.
Industry implications
The exits are squarely in the territory that has underpinned Australia’s food technology ambitions. CSIRO’s precision fermentation work has been a critical enabler for companies including Eden Brew and Eclipse Ingredients.
The agency’s Food Innovation Centre pilot plants – which provide food manufacturers with access to unique processing and testing infrastructure across Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney – have been used by the food and beverage manufacturing sector for product development, safety testing, and scale-up work.
The impact is already being felt beyond CSIRO’s walls. The recent merger of Food Frontier and Cellular Agriculture Australia, announced in early 2026, cited CSIRO’s exit from food innovation as context for their combined advocacy priorities.
Cellular Agriculture Australia CEO, Sam Perkins, noted the organisations were focused on “commissioning robust economic modelling to quantify the national opportunity and investment required to underpin the commercialisation of Australia’s food biomanufacturing industry” – work that CSIRO had previously supported through its research infrastructure and partnerships.
The loss of AFIN as a nationally coordinated platform also removes a key connector between food manufacturers, SMEs, investors and research institutions. The network had positioned itself as a vehicle for accelerating commercialisation and shaping national food policy, and counted food manufacturers, ingredient companies and government agencies among its members.
For Australia’s food manufacturing sector, which has long pointed to CSIRO’s Food Innovation Centre as the primary route to accessible, independent research and development support, the restructure narrows those options materially. No alternative institutional provider of comparable scale has been announced.
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Phys.org, 1 April 2026
Australia marks 50 years of monitoring the world’s cleanest air in remote northwest Tasmania at Kennaook / Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station, supporting global efforts to track human-driven changes to the atmosphere.
Perched above cliff tops in northwest Tasmania, the station plays a critical role in measuring the composition of the atmosphere, including greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane, as well as reactive gases and aerosols, and more than 80 polluting gases including ozone-depleting substances such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).
Australia’s national science agency CSIRO uses the data to undertake research on the composition of the atmosphere, to track and understand how it’s changing. The Bureau of Meteorology funds and operates the facility.
Measurements at the site began on April 1, 1976. The location was chosen due to its position facing the vast Southern Ocean that brings very clean “baseline air” that has traveled thousands of kilometers uninterrupted by land or recent human influence.
Measuring carbon dioxide and particles at Kennaook / Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station in 1976. Credit: CSIRO
CSIRO Senior Principal Research Scientist Dr. Melita Keywood said Kennaook / Cape Grim delivers vital data for Australia’s climate research, and internationally.
“The long-term data we collect at Kennaook / Cape Grim is critical for understanding changes in the atmosphere over time and how to manage them in the future,” Dr. Keywood said. “For example, we have seen an ongoing increase in CO₂ over the last 50 years from human-induced activities.
“However, we have also seen a decrease in the pollutant black carbon and ozone-depleting substances like CFC-11, showing us that international efforts to reduce pollution, like the Montreal Protocol, can be effective.”
For 24 hours a day, air is drawn through several inlets—one located 80 meters up a tower—and analyzed in real time to measure atmospheric compounds to track the drivers of climate change and ozone depletion.
Each season, scientists collect air samples into air tanks that are then sent to and stored at a CSIRO lab in Melbourne, Victoria, which has housed these important archived air samples since 1978.
CSIRO’s air archive houses air samples to record and measure air pollution, such as greenhouse gas emissions. Credit: CSIRO
Bureau of Meteorology Station Manager Sarah Prior said the station faced challenging beginnings at the remote site, with the first measurements made in a caravan that was donated by NASA after the Apollo missions.
“So much has changed over the past 50 years, from the way we capture our air samples to the types of pollutants that are now present in the atmosphere and the enormous technological advancements to measure them at trace levels,” Prior said.
“This station is at the forefront of understanding changes to our Earth’s atmosphere. Data from this site underpins international agreements such as the Paris Agreement and enables scientists and policymakers to gauge the impact of emission reduction efforts.”
The station serves as one of three premier global stations in the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) Global Atmospheric Watch program, which helps better understand climate change.
Station data informs Australia’s key climate change report card, The State of the Climate, which is due for release later this year.
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Energies Media, 7 April 2026.
The “Land Down Under” is taking renewable energy potential to a whole other level.
Known for its vast, bright, and sunny landscapes, this backdrop has become the perfect canvas for unique green infrastructure.
Solar power may be central to the technology, but how the energy is focused paints a different picture entirely.
Will this “eccentric” technique change how solar could be focused in the future, and possibly reshape carbon-heavy industries?
How some are struggling to let go of fossil fuels
Renewable energy capacity has skyrocketed over the past few years, with solar energy topping the charts.
Globally, giant solar panel installations have become a given in most sunny regions, such as Australia.
Many households and businesses have embraced this power source, but for many, it still does not make the cut.
Nearly 75% of industries still rely on fossil fuel-based energy sources. This includes sectors such as iron and steel production and alumina refining, which depend on extremely high temperatures.
For these massive sectors, commercial solar farms and standard batteries fall short of providing the desired thermal energy levels.
Even if an adequate temperature can be reached, conventional batteries are less beneficial for energy storage. Their hidden footprint makes them non-ideal, which is why alternative sources are gaining traction.
Today, one of the most sought-after sources is hydrogen, but since the natural form is scarce, it must be produced.
Harnessing the power of a thousand suns
In the U.S., green hydrogen production infrastructure is expanding fast nationwide.
Its popularity stems from its ability to serve as a direct replacement for fossil fuels in high-heat furnaces. The best part is that it only emits water vapor as a byproduct.
Unfortunately, using conventional solar energy (photovoltaics) is not efficient in this case.
Producing hydrogen that way would result in significant power losses due to multistep energy conversions. Also, to make water electrolysis most efficient, direct thermal heat surpassing 1,800°F is required.
This is where thousands of sun-tracking mirrors and concentrated solar power come in.
This effectively eliminates the middleman, as this highly concentrated energy is directed onto a tower in the middle’s receiver. Extreme temperatures are then achieved to split water molecules directly.
Unfortunately, this technique is not easily scalable for heavy industry. But now, CSIRO may have found the ideal solution.
Taking concentrated solar to another level for efficient green hydrogen production
Conventional concentrated solar reactor designs beam energy upwards. To overcome scalability obstacles, CSIRO flipped the switch on efficiency by engineering a “beam-down” solar reactor.
This approach places a secondary mirror at the top of the tower. The mirror then reflects the concentrated solar energy back to a ground-based reactor.
However, the real magic happens on the inside.
Unveiling the magical process inside ground-based reactors
Together with Japan’s Niigata University, a specialized catalyst called “doped ceria” was created. It is a modified metal oxide that can “inhale” and “exhale” oxygen at certain temperatures.
When solar energy is “beamed down” and heats doped ceria, oxygen is released. When steam is added, oxygen is removed directly from water vapor, producing pure green hydrogen.
The green hydrogen can then be captured and stored for heavy industry, providing a number of benefits.
Now, heavier reactors can be used due to higher stability, and maintenance for industrial operations becomes much simpler.
Amazingly, the “beam-down” solar reactor has achieved efficiency over 20%, making it highly competitive with conventional approaches. It also skips the high expenses of electrical conversions.
CSIRO’s “beam-down” breakthrough in Newcastle proves that natural resources and a green industrial future can be bridged. But only time will tell if and when it becomes the new norm.
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Cape York Weekly, 5 April 2026
The CSIRO and a global alliance working to speed up the discovery of ocean life have found more than 110 new fish and invertebrate species in the mysterious deep waters of the Coral Sea Marine Park — with more than 200 species expected to be identified in total.
Marine taxonomists led by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the Nippon Foundation-Nekton Ocean Census have been identifying specimens collected late last year.
Scientists onboard the national science agency research vessel (RV) Investigator discovered the new species between 200 and 3000 m deep in the marine park, which covers nearly one million square kilometres of mostly unexplored, deep water off the coast of Queensland, beyond the Great Barrier Reef.
CSIRO Coral Sea Frontier voyage chief scientist and shark expert Dr Will White identified four new species during a series of taxonomy workshops around Australia – two rays, one deep water catshark and a chimaera. Taxonomists study, classify and name new species.
“During the voyage it was incredible to observe plenty of unique, deep sea creatures in locations from seamounts and atolls to unexplored deep reefs,” he said.
“These incredible discoveries, made possible by the impressive deep water survey capabilities of RV Investigator, reveal the extraordinary life in our oceans and are crucial for protecting Australia’s marine biodiversity.”
Ocean Census head of science Dr Michelle Taylor said the workshops helped to close gaps in knowledge about undocumented marine life worldwide.
“To ensure high-quality data is visible to the global community in real-time, the taxonomists at the workshops input the species data directly into the Ocean Census Biodiversity Data Platform, the world’s first open-access digital gateway for newly discovered marine species,” she said.
“During what were likely the largest taxonomic workshops of marine animals ever undertaken in Australia, other notable discoveries included species of brittlestars, crabs, sea anemones and sponges that are new to science.”
CSIRO voyage and workshop participant Dr Candice Untiedt said: “Voyages like the Coral Sea Frontiers expedition are essential for uncovering biodiversity in our marine parks – but collecting specimens is just the first step; turning them into knowledge depends on taxonomic expertise.”
The RV Investigator team observed marine life using a new deep-towed specialised underwater camera platform.
Researchers captured footage of a rare sand tiger shark, which is a deepwater relative of the well-known grey nurse shark.
Samples from the voyage have been sent to collections across the country, including state museums and the CSIRO Australian National Fish Collection.
The work was funded by the Commonwealth’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy and backed by Parks Australia, Bush Blitz, the Ocean Census, and various museums, universities and research institutes.