Selected CSIRO media mentions for the week commencing 5 August. If you encounter a paywall, request a text version by emailing the article title here.
‘Save the CSIRO’: staff appeal to Minister to step in and stop hundreds of job cuts – CSIRO staff have called on Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic to stop widespread job cuts being rolled out across the organisation. The CSIRO Staff Association wrote to Mr Husic on Monday (5 August), telling him that the national science agency was under attack from within… RiotACT, 7 August 2024 (link, text below).
Cosmos Magazine publishes AI-generated articles, drawing criticism from journalists, co-founders – A decision by popular Australian science magazine Cosmos to publish articles generated by artificial intelligence (AI) has drawn criticism from its own contributors and former editors, including two co-founders. The CSIRO, which publishes Cosmos, says it backs the “experimental project”, which is designed to investigate the “opportunities and risks of using AI”, and scheduled to run until February 2025. But critics say the AI service undermines journalism and was built without proper consent… ABC Science, Thursday 8 August 2024 (video, link, text below)
‘Frustrating as hell’ Graeme Pearman’s climate research 50 years ago should have warned the world – In the 1970s, Graeme Pearman measured rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, briefing three prime ministers on what that meant for the planet. After decades leading Australia’s climate research, Pearman, now 82, speaks of the frustration that the science didn’t lead to meaningful change… Guardian Australia, November 2023 (video, link or text below).
NASA’s top minds host budding Indigenous astronauts – Five Indigenous students and budding astronauts will blast off for a 10-week internship at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as part of Monash University’s National Indigenous Space Academy (NISA). Supported by the Australian Space Agency and CSIRO, the cohort will gain rare hands-on experience working on some of NASA’s most exciting projects alongside top scientists and engineers… National Indigenous Times, 8 August 2024 (link, text below).
Rockets and rocks: Australia’s mining tech finds its way to space – A few years ago, Boeing approached scientists from CSIRO, Australia’s national science body, about adapting their advanced sensor technology for the International Space Station (ISS). To convey what they had in mind, the team from the US aerospace giant turned to science fiction… Nikkei Asia, 9 August 2024 (link, text below).
CSIRO builds a koala spotting app to help track adorable numbers – If you’ve ever needed a reason to look up on your next walk in bushland, there might be an app you can log your viewings in. Australia’s national science agency, the CSIRO, has released something for iOS and Android to help anyone in the country track koalas for the sake of conservation efforts… Pickr 9 August 2024 (link, text)
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By Ian Bushnell. RiotACT, 7 August 2024
CSIRO staff have called on Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic to stop widespread job cuts being rolled out across the organisation.
The CSIRO Staff Association wrote to Mr Husic on Monday (5 August), telling him that the national science agency was under attack from within.
“CSIRO’s core purpose and the ability of its staff to deliver world-class research are being undermined by significant restructuring and associated job losses,” the letter says.
The job losses stem from restructuring at CSIRO, which was designed to streamline operations and cut costs of Enterprise Support Services (ESS) by 25 per cent by 2025-26.
According to the CSIRO’s latest annual report, there were 1990 staff in ESS, indicating as many as 500 jobs could be on the chopping block.
Staff say about 700 jobs will be lost across the organisation, and that’s just the beginning.
“These cuts are widespread and reckless, jeopardising vital research and national capabilities in areas such as health, biosecurity, climate change and data sciences, including artificial intelligence,” the association says.
“Public sector science must be funded as a vital part of a successful Australia, especially in times of economic rebuilding and changing climate. We must protect the CSIRO so it can continue to be world-leading, trusted, robust and brave.
“We request your support and immediate intervention to save the CSIRO.”
The public sector union said that CSIRO CEO Doug Hilton had repeatedly refused to listen to staff concerns and that employee confidence in the strategic direction of CSIRO was collapsing.
The CPSU said the large-scale restructuring was cutting core scientific research, ending long-term projects and shrinking science support roles.
The cuts announced to date included more than 400 jobs from Enterprise Services, 43 from Health and Biosecurity (human health), 30 from Agriculture & Food, five from Manufacturing, and 120 from Data61.
It was also rumoured that 65 jobs in Environment could be lost.
The CPSU said the cuts to health and biosecurity (human health) were in their final stages and, as a result, CSIRO was set to exit clinical trial research, leading to the closure of the clinical trial unit based at Sydney’s Westmead Hospital and the complete removal of the organisation’s presence at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) in Adelaide.
Further research into the development of high amylose wheat, which improves digestive health and provides protection against bowel cancer and Type 2 diabetes, would end, as well as allergy research such as the OmnisOva program, which produces new generation allergen-free, egg white products for families.
A recent Staff Association snap poll revealed plummeting morale throughout the organisation and concerns over Australia’s ongoing research capability.
CSIRO Section Secretary Susan Tonks said the gutting of CSIRO flew in the face of the Federal Government’s Future Made in Australia policy.
“It isn’t clear to me or the hundreds of CSIRO staff who are losing or having already lost their jobs how these cuts will benefit our country in tackling the big issues that are ahead of us,” she said.
“The CSIRO is a national treasure – it’s home to world-leading science and innovation, and it needs to be protected, not gutted.”
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By James Purtill. ABC Science, Thursday 8 August 2024.
A decision by popular Australian science magazine Cosmos to publish articles generated by artificial intelligence (AI) has drawn criticism from its own contributors and former editors, including two co-founders.
The CSIRO, which publishes Cosmos, says it backs the “experimental project”, which is designed to investigate the “opportunities and risks of using AI”, and scheduled to run until February 2025.
But critics say the AI service undermines journalism and was built without proper consent.
The project was the result of a 2023 grant from the Meta Australian News Fund, administered by the Walkley Foundation which supports excellence in journalism.
The controversy is an example of growing anxieties around the role of AI in journalism as publishers experiment with new productivity tools. Hundreds of journalists employed by Nine Entertainment went on strike last week, partly over AI protections.
Cosmos ran into financial difficulties and lost half its staff earlier this year, having won dozens of journalism and industry awards over 20 years of publishing. National science agency CSIRO took over the publication in June.
The grant supporting AI-generated explainers pre-dates that takeover.
During two weeks last month, Cosmos published six AI-generated explainer articles on its website on topics ranging from black holes to carbon sinks.
Each article stated, “This article was generated by our custom AI service.”
“Our service was built to focus on our archive of more than 15,000 factually correct science news stories and features. It also uses Open AI to help create the content. All generated content is fact checked by a trained science communicator and edited by our publishing team.”
Cosmos contributors reacted to the move with disbelief, saying their work had been used to develop an AI service that generated articles and, in their opinion, undermined their role as journalists.
Many were angry they had not been consulted and said their calls to the publisher had gone unanswered.
“I’ve contacted CSIRO and the Cosmos editors twice in the last week and had no response,” Bianca Nogrady, a freelance science journalist and Cosmos contributor, said.
Editorial staff at Cosmos were also not told about the proposed custom AI service, two former editors said.
According to Ian Connellan and Gail MacCallum, Cosmos’s former publisher, the Royal Institution of Australia (RiAus), did not tell them it was applying for funding for a custom AI service in late 2023, even though they were in charge of Cosmos’s editorial decisions.
“We had no knowledge of the proposal to employ AI as a background writer creator,” Mr Connellan, who was the RiAus editor-in-chief until February, said.
“As editor-in-chief, I would have said this is a bad idea.”
Ms MacCallum, Cosmos’s managing editor at the time, said there were questions to answer about the ethics of using AI in such a way.
“I’m a huge proponent of exploring AI, but having it create articles of fact is a little past my comfort zone.”
Kylie Ahern, who co-founded Cosmos in 2004 and served as chief executive until 2013, said AI-generated articles were “not the right direction” for her former employer.
Wilson da Silva, another co-founder who edited Cosmos from 2004 to 2013, said it was “definitely not what [he] would’ve done.”
Cosmos’s acting editor, Gavin Stone, referred questions from the ABC to CSIRO Publishing.
In a statement, a CSIRO Publishing spokesperson dismissed concerns that Cosmos’s AI service was trained on contributors’ articles.
“This experiment does not involve training OpenAI’s GPT-4 model (which was pre‑trained by OpenAI),” the spokesperson said.
The service works by using OpenAI’s GPT-4 to generate text on various topics. It then automatically fact-checks this against the publisher’s large, well-researched database of 15,000 stories and feature articles using a process called retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).
GPT-4 was trained on vast datasets including CommonCrawl, a repository of content scraped from billions of web pages, including those of Cosmos Magazine. The legality of this approach is still being decided, and The New York Times and several authors are currently suing OpenAI for using scraped copyrighted work to train its AI.
The RAG method means Cosmos’s AI service wasn’t specifically trained on Cosmos articles, although it ultimately relies on this body of work to fact-check its output.
The CSIRO Publishing spokesperson said the project was an experiment to assess the “possible usefulness (and risks)” of using a model like GPT-4 “to assist our science communication professionals to produce draft science explainer articles”.
The experiment was under “continual review”, they added.
“This ongoing review could involve testing changes in how we program the tool, how we choose to use the tool, and whether any further usage or development of the tool is to continue after the end of the project.”
Cosmos has not published an AI-generated article since the end of July.
Despite the relatively recent public use of the technology, Cosmos’s experiment with AI-generated explainers was underway well before CSIRO Publishing took over in June.
In late 2023, RiAus, which published Cosmos from September 2018 to June 2024, applied for a digital innovation grant through the Meta Australia News Fund managed by the Walkley Foundation.
Meta (formerly Facebook) set up the $15 million three-year fund to support Australian journalism in 2021, following its public spat with the Morrison government over the News Media Bargaining Code.
Will Berryman, executive director of RiAus, said he applied for a grant to develop an AI tool to help journalists with background research, “as an aid to journalism and not a tool that generates articles directly”.
“When we thought about doing this we didn’t see it being a tool that would generate articles,” he said.
“These were tools that were put together to help them do what they do.”
RiAus was awarded the grant in February 2024. Mr Berryman left Cosmos when CSIRO Publishing took over the publication in June.
But Walkley Foundation CEO Shona Martyn said “the nature of the project was fully explained in the entry”, which was lodged by the September 2023 application deadline.
“Cosmos Magazine received a grant … for a project that utilised AI and machine learning to assist in the repurposing of some of their existing science stories into text, video and audio explainers with the aim of driving audience engagement and knowledge,” Ms Martyn said.
Mr Berryman said AI tools like Cosmos’s were needed to push back against misinformation, which was being increasingly AI-generated, and to help publishers produce content at a lower cost, given the decline of advertising revenue that used to keep magazines operating.
“The business model is broken for things like Cosmos,” he said.
“We needed to do something differently.”
He said contributors did not need to be consulted about the tool as it was simply a more “efficient and effective” version of Google’s search function.
“They’re not independent writers. They work for the [publisher],” he said.
Others say Cosmos’s use of its archive raises tricky ethical and legal questions.
Much of Cosmos’s archive of 15,000 articles was written by freelancers that retain copyright over their work, ex-editors Mr Connellan and Ms MacCallum said.
“The creator of the work retains copyright but grants a perpetual license to Cosmos to use that work both at the time it’s commissioned and in perpetuity,” Mr Connellan said.
Creators also have “moral rights” which protect the relationship between a creator and their work even if the creator no longer owns the work or copyright.
CSIRO Publishing’s charter promises to treat authors honestly and reward creativity.
Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) research and strategy policy lead Lilia Anderson said AI can be a valuable resource to newsrooms and journalists “where it is used ethically”.
“What that means for us is that staff are consulted on any use of AI in the workplace, that they consent to that use, and that AI is being used in a way that doesn’t replace journalist jobs, but enhances or supports their role.”
She said AI-generated articles could be ethical so long as journalists retained editorial control.
Along with consent, the MEAA is calling for journalists to be compensated for the use of their work to train AI.
“We want the benefits to be shared in some way,” she said.
Monica Attard, co-director of the Centre for Media Transition at the University of Technology Sydney, said the ethics of Cosmos’s use of AI partly depended on the publisher’s intention, which was difficult to infer.
“It’s about whether they’re using it to employ fewer journalists or to facilitate or improve the end product.”
Michael Davis, also at the Centre for Media Transition, agreed.
“If it’s just churning out short factual articles and that helps support the magazine so they can employ journalists to do the big feature stories … there’s a reasonable argument for it.”
But Science Journalist Association of Australia (SJAA) president Jackson Ryan dismissed the efficiency argument for AI-generated articles as “weasel words”.
“At end of day, it’s a cost-cutting measure and a way to save money for an outlet that’s on its last legs because it just got sold,” he said.
“The easiest way to cut back on costs is always staffing.”
The Walkley Foundation also drew criticism for administering the AI-generated articles grant.
Kylie Ahern, who now runs a science communications agency, said it was a strange decision given the broader questions around the use of AI in journalism and concerns workers are being undercut by generative AI trained on their work.
“I cannot believe that’s what the Walkleys would fund,” she said.
Freelance journalist Bianca Nogrady added that she was “incredibly disappointed” the Walkley Foundation appeared to have backed the project.
“An organisation that’s entrusted with supporting journalism in Australia has funded a project that actively undermines journalism in Australia.”
Walkley Foundation CEO Shona Martyn said the Royal Institution of Australia’s entry was “considered by a judging panel of experienced journalists”.
“More generally, the Walkley Foundation recognises that AI may be used in journalism projects, but entrants to its awards, scholarships and fellowships must fully declare how AI has been used in any work submitted or in the creation of any entry submissions.”
In a subsequent statement on Thursday afternoon, the Walkley Foundation said although it was the administrator of the Meta Australian News Fund, it was “not the awarder of the grant” and had played “no part in its funding or judging”. But a spokesperson confirmed the Walkley Foundation had appointed the panel of six that chose the successful applications.
“The nature of the project was fully explained in the entry and the bulk of the application was for funding for freelance writers, content editors, video producers, fact-checkers, a podcaster, and other related professionals,” the spokesperson said.
“The Walkley Foundation is in ongoing conversation with the CSIRO, and as is its practice, will be monitoring compliance of this grant until its conclusion in February 2025.
“Under the terms of the Meta Australian News Fund, grant recipients are obliged to repay funding if a project does not complete or breaches its contractual agreement.
Ms Martyn said, “The Walkley Foundation expects all recipients of grants to honour and pay copyright holders as required, and fulfil all legal responsibilities.
“The CSIRO has assured the Walkley Foundation that this will be the case.”
Aside from these legal and ethical questions, Cosmos’s AI-generated articles were boring, long-serving former Cosmos editor Wilson da Silva said.
“Science writing is not regurgitating facts in an accessible way.
“How much inspiration will you get from an AI? The human journey of discovery is what makes science so compelling.”
The co-founder, who edited the publication during a period where it was twice named magazine of the year, said Cosmos has “diverted from its traditional task”.
“We set ourselves the task of trying to make it the New Yorker of science. It’s changed.”
Ms Ahern said: “The only way to build audience is through great journalism. You don’t build a brand on AI.
“If Cosmos doesn’t value science journalism, who will?”
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By Graham Readfern. Guardian Australia, November 2023
“I often wonder: where did I go wrong?” Graeme Pearman says. “Why didn’t people respond? Is that my responsibility?”
When Guardian Australia meets him at his home on the outskirts of Melbourne, the veteran climate scientist is frustrated.
“If you go through the whole process and the rigour of conducting science, [you think] at the end of the day surely people will understand what you’re saying – they will incorporate those risks into what they do,” he says.
“Well, it doesn’t work that way.
“The reality is that for a period of nearly two decades, Australia went backwards [on climate action]. From a personal perspective, yes, it’s frustrating.”
Outside two alpacas are busy keeping the grass down. A pergola over a deck is heaving with pink wisteria flowers and inside on a kitchen bench Pearman has been struggling with an impossible jigsaw of a Van Gogh painting.
The calmness and lazy beauty of it all is jarring, given we’re here to talk about his life’s work studying a phenomenon that could send countless species extinct, reshape coastlines from rising seas and supercharge storms and wildfires.
More than 50 years ago Pearman was working at the government science agency the CSIRO and measuring how many CO2 molecules were in the air.
He went on to establish the government’s first climate science program and brief three prime ministers (Hawke, Keating and Howard) on climate change. Later, after an acrimonious parting with the CSIRO, he would travel from community groups to fossil fuel company board rooms giving presentations on climate change.
If there is such a thing as the grandfather of Australian climate science, then 82-year-old Pearman is surely a contender.
In 1971, in Pearman’s first job at the CSIRO, he and his colleague John Garratt were asked by their boss Bill Priestley to develop, test and then install equipment that could measure how much carbon dioxide there was in the atmosphere.
Every Thursday Pearman and Garratt drew air samples from a 10 metre-high mast above a wheatfield in Rutherglen, Victoria.
What shocked Pearman was that his measurements were a close match to those taken in Hawaii by the US scientist Charles Keeling – 8,600km away and in a different hemisphere.
“The curiosity for the two of us was why should the concentration be the same?” Pearman says. “Above this growing wheat crop – and on the top of a mountain in Hawaii. Two hemispheres that are totally different. Why should that be the case?”
Since the late 1950s Keeling had been finding the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was creeping up and by the late 60s he was blaming the rise on fossil fuel burning.
Pearman suspected Keeling was wrong and that the rise was down to “drifting standards” in the way the measurements were being taken.
“We thought: he’s got to be wrong. How could humans, mere humans, actually influence the global climate? But within about a year, we knew Keeling was right.”
In 1974 Pearman took six flasks of Australian air samples to laboratories around the world, including Keeling’s, where scientists were also measuring CO2.
Within a few years different readings were being taken from planes and Pearman had helped set up a long-term monitoring station for atmospheric gases at Cape Grim on the north-west tip of Tasmania.
The first carbon dioxide reading at Cape Grim in May 1976 showed CO2 at 328 parts per million. On the day of our interview, the latest reading shows 417 ppm (an increase of 26%).
Australia has just had its warmest winter on record, during what will very likely be the globe’s hottest year on record.
A fact easily forgotten in the blast radius of the last decade of Australia’s climate wars is that in 1990 the Hawke government wanted to introduce a target to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by the year 2005.
In 1989 the UN awarded Pearman and the CSIRO a global award, recognising Australians were as well informed on climate change as almost any other community in the world.
Pearman had organised a conference in 1987 where he had asked scientists working across the economy – from irrigation to agriculture, energy and the natural environment – to present their thoughts on the potential implications of climate change for their sectors.
Pearman would eventually make his way through the ranks to become the chief of CSIRO’s atmospheric research division.
By the early 1990s it seemed Australia was well positioned and well informed.
But Pearman admits he was naive to think that policy and action would just follow the science.
Just as Pearman and his colleagues were telling the public and politicians about the risks from climate change, Australia’s fossil fuel industries were bringing their weight and cash to the policy table. Ultimately the science was outgunned by vested interests.
In 2003 Pearman joined the Australian Climate Group – a group of experts convened by WWF and a multinational insurance group. In 2004 the group released a report saying Australia should cut its emissions by 60% by 2050.
Joining this group would be Pearman’s downfall.
He suspects – but doesn’t know for sure – that CSIRO had come under “a huge amount of pressure” from the government because of the group’s suggestions that fossil fuel use would need to be curtailed.
“I think it was from a government level of some sort to say that we don’t want people actually talking down the future of these particular commodities,” he says. “And I don’t think I ever did that – I simply pointed out what the consequences of pursuing that future would be.
“So all of a sudden I found myself in a discussion … about how it might be a good time to go. I felt devastated.”
Pearman took an academic role at Monash University and started a consultancy to provide briefings on the latest science to industry and the community.
He has racked up more than 500 presentations and continues to write scientific papers.
But he continues to be frustrated at the lack of action.
“We still have people talking about utilising massive gas reserves that should never come out of the ground. Because whether we burn them or someone else burns them, they will contribute to further warming.
“We’ve got to stop this. Not just Australia, but the global community. But Australia should be leading the way, not dragging its feet.”
Pearman is an instinctively optimistic character, but the country’s continued promotion of fossil fuels is causing that optimism to become “overwhelmed by pessimism” about the future.
It is part of the human condition to care about other species, he says. But at the same time “it is us as humans that have created this way of looking at the world – created the importance of wealth generation compared with other values that we might have”.
“And we’re not going to turn that around very quickly.”
What does give Pearman “some sense of security” for the future is that young people are well informed.
“I think they need to have courage – to find courage if they haven’t got it – to accept that the world is different and needs to be different into the future and that they should stand up and be part of the transition.
“The older people of the community have had their time. It’s their time now.
“Stand up and take responsibility and do what you think is necessary.”
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By David Prestipino. National Indigenous Times, 8 August 2024.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is busy with 40 missions however it has another on the horizon this month, mentoring Aboriginal students on their journey to space.
Five Indigenous students and budding astronauts will blast off for a 10-week internship at NASA’s JPL, as part of Monash University’s National Indigenous Space Academy (NISA).
Supported by the Australian Space Agency and CSIRO, the cohort will gain rare hands-on experience working on some of NASA’s most exciting projects alongside top scientists and engineers.
The selected interns are: Carl Goodwin (Gamilaroi) from Monash University, pursuing a Master’s in Artificial Intelligence, David Corporal (Eastern Arrernte) from QUT, studying a Master of Engineering, Jordan McGrath (Lunga Kija) from Griffith University, focusing on aerospace engineering, Renee Wootten (Tharawal) from the University of Sydney, specializing in environmental science and Lucy Barr (Palawa) from the University of Tasmania, majoring in astrophysics.
Professor Chris Lawrence, Associate Dean (Indigenous) at Monash University’s Faculties of Engineering and IT, said he was thrilled for the students.
“These outstanding Indigenous STEM students will be involved in cutting-edge NASA/JPL projects, from ocean exploration vehicles to studying microorganisms on the International Space Station,” Professor Lawrence said.
“Empowering our Indigenous youth to learn from the best in the world is phenomenal. We dream of NISA one day producing the world’s first Aboriginal astronaut.”
Each intern will dive into a unique project at NASA’s JPL research institute, where they will be paired with experienced mentors and work on cutting-edge missions.
Proud Gamilaroi man from Brisbane, Mr Goodwin will be analysing spectral data captured by NASA’s Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) mission aboard the International Space Station.
“I am really excited to apply my AI and machine learning knowledge for research in the space sector,” Mr Goodwin said.
“Apart from working with world-leading space scientists this is also a great opportunity for me to interact and work with other like-minded Indigenous people.
“Our people are underrepresented in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths, (STEM), and programs like NISA are providing valuable stepping stones for First Nations students in this sector.”
The dream to becoming an astronaut is also closer for Eastern Arrente man David Corporal too.
The 27-year-old QUT engineering master’s student, who was announced Engineer of the Year Award in the Australian Space Awards earlier this year, and his impending trip to California is the continuation of a journey towards space that began more than 10 years ago, when he was inspired by online videos of Chris Hadfield, the then-commander of the International Space Station.
“Being immersed amongst, and learning from, some of the smartest people in the world at JPL is going to be an extraordinary experience and a great privilege for me,” he said.
“Space exploration is the ultimate frontier, and my passion is being able to push this frontier by helping overcome the engineering challenges we face.
“Throughout my journey, I have been grateful to have the support of my family and many others, and now NISA and QUT as well.”
QUT will host Australia’s first Faculty of Indigenous Knowledges and Culture, with courses to be offered in 2025, building on the university’s strong foundations in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education, research and partnerships.
Before heading to NASA, the 2024 interns undergo Monash’s ‘Space Boot Camp,’ an intensive program designed to prepare them for their roles at JPL.
The camp covers a broad range of topics, including aerodynamics, robotics, and planetary science, offering a comprehensive introduction to space exploration.
CSIRO joined NISA as a new partner this year, launching a scholarship program to support Indigenous STEM researchers.
Taylor Bamin, a Gamilaraay woman and CSIRO’s Indigenous Talent Manager, said the collaboration was a major leap forward to foster innovation.
“These scholarships are an important step in supporting the work of the National Indigenous Space Academy and building a community of Indigenous STEM professionals who are global leaders in their fields,” she said.
“Being able to support Indigenous Australian university students to participate in this extraordinary program is one way we can champion STEM careers and drive innovation for the benefit of Australia.”
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By Shaun Turton. Nikkei Asia, 9 August 2024
A few years ago, Boeing approached scientists from CSIRO, Australia’s national science body, about adapting their advanced sensor technology for the International Space Station (ISS).
To convey what they had in mind, the team from the US aerospace giant turned to science fiction. Specifically, they referred to a scene in Ridley Scott’s 2012 film “Prometheus” in which spacefarers exploring an alien planet launch autonomous flying spheres to map a cavernous underground maze.
For the CSIRO team, which specializes in research and development for Australia’s resource sector, the concept wasn’t at all far-fetched. It develops remotely operated and autonomous robots, high-tech sensors, mapping devices and mining equipment for use in some of this world’s most hazardous environments.
Its innovations are deployed in narrow shafts deep underground where GPS is unavailable and the air is flammable, and in vast open-cut pits where temperatures rise to the extreme and dust blankets machinery. Now, the team has added low-earth orbit to the list: the sensor it developed with Boeing reached the ISS in March aboard a SpaceX rocket.
The project is one example of how Australia’s resource industry is increasingly applying its expertise to space exploration.
“Australia’s got a lot of credentials in mining in extreme environments, remote operations, automation,” said Marc Elmouttie, one of the lead researchers on the CSIRO project. “When you start looking at potential extraction of resources on the moon or Mars or asteroids and all those kinds of future visions, when you start sort of trying to design the concept of operations to how that would look, we’re certainly well-credentialed to sit at the table and give our insights.”
The CSIRO system combines specially developed software with high-resolution vision system, light detection and ranging (LIDAR) sensors, and equipment for spatial orientation, all developed for use in mines. It has been fitted to NASA’s Astrobee robot to serve as the eyes for the floating space bot and allow researchers to get real-time data.
The ultimate aim is to use this in the kind of caretaker systems that will be needed in planned space stations, such as the NASA-led Lunar Gateway.
Apart from the CSIRO project, two consortiums are vying to build Australia’s first lunar rover, dubbed the “Roo-ver” after the country’s famed marsupial. One group, ELO2, counts mining giant BHP as a partner, the other, AROSE, is supported by rival Rio Tinto.
Australian oil and gas company Woodside Energy, meanwhile, is trialing a NASA robot by deploying it on offshore facilities on Earth. NASA said the project will help design robots for conditions on the moon.
The idea of mining space for commercial purposes remains closer to the realm of sci-fi than reality, given the costs and the legal, ethical and environmental questions involved. Just getting anything to the moon costs between $1 million and $2 million per kilogram.
But mining expertise will play an important role in setting up and servicing a human presence on our planet’s natural satellite, according to engineer Joseph Kenrick, head of Lunar Outpost Oceania, the company designing and building ELO2’s proposed rover.
“Australia and particularly BHP have centuries of experience with mining and resource knowledge, resource extraction,” Kenrick said. “We’re able to leverage that experience in the design of the spaceflight rover and vice versa.”
The successful Roo-ver will be launched by NASA on a mission to collect lunar soil, known as regolith, from which scientists will attempt to extract oxygen.
Kenrick, who worked in the oil and gas sector before obtaining a master’s in space resources, said getting detailed ground data on reserves of minerals like iron, aluminum and silicon is an important first step for lunar ambitions.
But the real game changer could be water, such as that found around the lunar South Pole.
“You can electrolyze that hydrogen and oxygen [and get] rocket fuel, right? And then the moon becomes basically a gas station in the sky. Once you have that, there’s a step change in economics.”
The race to establish a human presence on the moon is heating up, fueled by geopolitics.
NASA, under its Artemis Program, aims to return a crewed mission to the lunar surface in late 2026. The Lunar Gateway, which includes planned contributions from the European Space Agency, Japan and the United Arab Emirates, would pave the way for a potential surface outpost that could be used as a staging post for a Mars mission.
China aims to put its astronauts on the lunar surface by 2030 and in June retrieved a sample from a probe that landed on the far side of the moon. In 2021, it launched a joint initiative with Russia called the International Lunar Research Station, for “experimental research facilities … on the surface and/or in the orbit of the moon.”
Cassandra Steer, chair of the Australian Centre for Space Governance, says the new space race is not like the old one.
“It’s very much an expression of geopolitics and therefore it’s not a bipolar race like we saw in the 20th century, because we’re in a multipolar era today,” Steer said, adding that cheaper access to rockets has also helped to change the game.
“Middle powers have a lot more impact in what’s going on, and smaller countries also have a stake in what’s going on,” she said.
The World Economic Forum predicts the space economy will triple to $1.8 trillion by 2035. Australia is keen to get in on the action. In 2018, it founded the Australian Space Agency with a mission to triple the size of the country’s space sector to $12 billion by 2030 and add 20,000 jobs.
For Australia’s resource sector, collaborating with the space industry offers huge opportunities that flow both ways, said Michelle Keegan, program director at AROSE, the other group competing to build the Roo-ver.
She said while major mining operations have know-how in scale, reliability and continuity, adapting autonomous vehicles and equipment to operate on the moon delivers advancements that feed back into the sector in areas like miniaturization, more efficient energy use and more sophisticated sensors.
“Sensing that’s deployed on the Mars rover, the LIBS [Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy] technology, is something you now start to see pretty widely in the exploration for lithium,” Keegan said.
“There is huge investment in the space sector, billions of dollars, and it’s only growing,” she added. “As technology continues to advance in space, we need to either create those spinoffs or connect those spinoffs into mining.”
Keegan, who has more than 20 years of experience in mining with Rio Tinto and South32, said Australian companies have a lot to offer the space race. She pointed to comments by one of AROSE’s founders, former astronaut and now-NASA deputy director Pam Melroy.
“She was the one that said if you can operate [remote equipment] from about 1,700 kilometers or 2,000 kilometers away from Perth, then it’s going to be a piece of cake on the moon,” Keegan said.
CSIRO scientists Jonathon Ralston and Jane Hodgkinson, who specialize in in-situ resource utilization, are looking at adapting mining technology for missions to the moon and, eventually, Mars.
Ralston, who has a background in robotics for extreme resource environments, says the initial focus is on sensors to characterize and map minerals on the moon, which will then need to be paired with autonomous vehicles to carry out surveys.
There are many challenges, including brutal temperature swings, sharp and “sticky” moon dust and the complexity of operating in a vacuum and in high-radiation environments.
But the benefits, the pair say, will be huge, on and off Earth. For example, innovations such as processing iron ore in an environment without carbon or creating closed-loop systems where nothing is wasted could be deployed on our home planet to fight climate change.
“If we can reduce iron or turn oxidized minerals and metals into non-oxidized minerals and metals on the moon, it’s going to be a method we could potentially explore on Earth or vice versa,” said Hodgkinson, a geologist.
“We’re really interested in that spinning of ideas and technologies. … We’ve already been doing [this] on Earth and informing the rocket scientists, because they know an awful lot about rockets, but we know about the rocks.”
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By Leigh Stark. Pickr, 9 August 2024
Keeping count of an animal now has an app, and that app could help koala conservation.
If you’ve ever needed a reason to look up on your next walk in bushland, there might be an app you can log your viewings in. Australia’s national science agency, the CSIRO, has released something for iOS and Android to help anyone in the country track koalas for the sake of conservation efforts.
It’s been just over two years since koala populations were officially listed as endangered, and since then, the CSIRO has been working to track and monitor populations of the adorable critters, working with a government program to improve their numbers.
The latest effort comes in the form of the Koala Spotter app, an aspect of citizen science that sees regular people cast their gaze to the trees, look for a koala, record the location, and if you can, snap a photo.
“Koalas can be difficult to spot from the ground, and as they are most active at night, they often rest high in trees during the day,” said Dr Andrew Hoskins, Quantitative Biologist at the CSIRO.
“To count the species, scientists have been using thermal drones to spot koalas from above, deploying acoustic recorders in the field and detection dogs, conducting scat analysis, while also carrying out systematic visual surveys and data integration from previous and historic sources,” he said.
“We need as many different eyes as possible to help paint the most accurate picture of koala numbers and distribution across the country.”
The Koala Spotter app isn’t a drone, but is an app for iPhone and Android that is helping the CSIRO’s National Koala Monitoring Program track koala numbers. The current estimate sits between 224,000 and 524,000, with a new estimate due in March next year. According to the CSIRO, 730 records have been contributed by the app so far, with more citizen scientists popping up with its use.
“Most of the data we’ve gotten from the app so far has come from families and children,” said Dr. Hoskins.
“It’s very easy to use, and the data provided is fed straight into the National Koala Monitoring Program If you spot a koala simply record its location in the app, try and snap a photo if possible, and press ‘done’.”
