Imma Perfetto
Cosmos science journalist
South Australia’s first state-owned and manufactured satellite, Kanyini, successfully launched in the early hours of Saturday 17 August.
Following a delay of several weeks due the July mishap involving SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, Kanyini was finally delivered to low Earth orbit onboard the Transporter-11 mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, USA.
Kanyini was one of 116 spacecraft deployed on the rideshare mission, including Australian Waratah Seed WS-1 rideshare spacecraft and its sister vehicle CUAVA-2.
Mission Director Peter Nikoloff told Cosmos communications with Kanyini were established straight away.
“These satellites, when they are first released off from the SpaceX launch vehicle, they’re actually tumbling, which is pretty normal because you can’t do a perfect roll off,” he says.
“The spacecraft itself has got the ability to de-tumble and stabilise. While it’s tumbling, though, you can’t use some of the high bandwidth antennas.”
Kanyini has 2 phases of communications, Nikoloff says. The first phase – ultra-high frequency, or UHF – can contact the satellite while it is rotating.
“That’s just enough to understand what’s happening on the spacecraft, to control it and manage the commissioning,” says Nikoloff.
Commissioning, according to NASA, is the first phase of satellite operations. It typically includes: “initial orbit determination and tracking; making first contact; sequential activation and checkout of spacecraft subsystems; and calibration of payloads, sensors, and control systems.”
The UHF information picked up by Cingulan Space’s ground station in Yass, New South Wales, and is beamed to the Mission’s operations centre at Inovor Technologies in Adelaide, SA. Inovor designed, built, and tested the satellite bus and will control it during the 3 years of operations.
The team will be checking out the satellite’s systems over the coming months, including those essential for pointing it in the desired direction and orientation.
Only then can the next phase of communications begin – high downloads of the large volumes of data produced by Kanyini’s payloads: the HyperScout 2 Flight Model hyperspectral imager, by Dutch company Cosine, and Myriota’s Internet of Things (IoT) sensor.
This will be facilitated by Norwegian company KSAT (Kongsberg Satellite Services)’s network of global ground stations.
“With our Earth observation payload, the HyperScout 2 … we can look at light in 50 different bands, we can look at thermal information in 3 bands,” says Nikoloff.
“Plus, it’s got an artificial intelligence processor on board. Because of the volume of data that we can produce, we will be looking at how we can use the AI to limit the volume that we need to send down.”
The data collected by HyperScout 2 will be analysed by various research initiatives, including the SA Ecomaps project to map and monitor native vegetation and crop health across the state. Nikoloff says there will also be collaborative projects with the European Space Agency (ESA) to continue their work on understanding the spectral data from the instrument.
Telecommunications service provider, Myriota’s, IoT sensor will send data from IoT devices and sensors on Earth to Kanyini. There it will be transferred to the cloud and returned to Earth to improve delivery of emergency services and environmental monitoring.
“As part of Myriota’s commercial IoT constellation, Kanyini will be instrumental in delivering critical field data to users across a range of key industries,” says Myriota Chief Technical Officer and co-founder, Dr David Haley.
Kanyini’s data will provide critical insights for the early detection of bushfires; sensing urban heat islands in South Australia; and developing predictive AI capabilities for natural disaster events such as landslides and flooding.
“We have now realised our mission of seeing homegrown South Australian space technologies launched into low Earth orbit,” says SmartSat Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) Chief Executive Officer, Andy Koronios.
“The coming months will be crucial as the team works to fully operationalise Kanyini and begin reaping the benefits of its data-gathering capabilities.”
The $6.5 million SA Space Services Mission, lead by Smart Sat CRC in collaboration with Inovor Technologies and Myriota, was funded by the South Australian government.
“The launch of Kanyini is a significant milestone and pivotal step forward for South Australia’s space sector, setting us up for further success on a global stage,” says Minister for Defence and Space Industries Stephen Mullighan.
“We are excited for Kanyini to unlock more opportunities for research and development of innovative, sovereign Australian space technologies.”
