From GPS to grid timing: Australia’s space dependence is now a national security question

The reaction was swift. Beijing warned against an arms race beyond the atmosphere and accused Washington of turning space into a theatre of war. A former Chinese army instructor said the only real change was that the US had stopped hiding what had long been widely known. Moscow called for space to remain free of weapons, a few months after public tracking analysts watched five Russian satellites manoeuvre into almost the same orbit as a commercial radar satellite.

To most Australians, this can sound like a distant quarrel between superpowers. It sits much closer to home than it appears.

Consider an ordinary weekday. The clock on your phone is kept accurate by signals from American GPS satellites. The tap of a card at the café is recorded against that same timing. Power grids use satellite time to keep the network in step. The evening weather forecast relies on imagery from Japan’s Himawari satellite. Tractors in the wheatbelt, haul trucks in the Pilbara, ships approaching Port Botany and the flight bringing family home for Christmas all lean on navigation from orbit. In remote communities, satellites carry the internet connection, the telehealth appointment and the school lesson.

Yet Australia owns remarkably little of what sits overhead. Apart from the NBN’s two Sky Muster satellites and a small number of government and research spacecraft, the services we use every day are run by the United States, Europe, Japan and private companies based overseas. Defence leans heavily on allied networks for communications and surveillance, and a planned sovereign military satellite system was cancelled in 2024.

The trouble is how little we can see of the risks these systems now face, and how little say we have in protecting them. When the satellites we depend on share orbits with weapons, a crisis between other countries could reach Australian homes and businesses without a single shot fired in our region. Jamming of navigation signals, a hostile spacecraft drifting close to a communications satellite, or a severe solar storm could each degrade services here.

The threat is spreading. In April, the Secure World Foundation documented counterspace capabilities in 13 countries.

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Washington’s announcement should prompt Australia to hold an open public conversation about its dependence on space. Which satellites keep our critical services running? What happens when one fails or is interfered with? Who is responsible for the back-up? Boards and regulators already ask these questions about cyber security. Space has largely escaped the same scrutiny, even though the consequences of disruption are just as real.

Part of the answer lies in how we already protect what matters on the ground. A power station or data centre is guarded in layers. Fences and hardened buildings keep trouble out, alarms raise the warning, patrols go and look, and police or the military step in when the threat is serious. In orbit, satellites carry some protection against cyber attack and radiation, and national space commands are taking shape. The layers in between, the alarms and the patrols, barely exist.

That gap is where Sydney firm Space Machines Company is focusing. Its Solstice OS software acts as the alarm system, mapping which satellite services an organisation relies on and showing what a threat in orbit means on the ground. Its Optimus Viper spacecraft is the patrol, affordable enough to build in numbers and able to manoeuvre quickly to where it is needed and provide a protective presence in orbit under the control of authorised operators.

Final thoughts

Most organisations had little idea how exposed they were. Ask a bank, a hospital or an energy company which satellites they depend on, and most can’t tell you. You can’t manage a risk you can’t see.

Instead, building that capability onshore would strengthen Australia’s standing with its allies.

Australia will always work with its partners in space, and that’s a strength. We should also be able to see our own exposure, respond on our own terms and bring something of real value to those partnerships. That capability can be designed and built here.

The Americans have said aloud what military planners have known for years. Space is contested, and that contest reaches every Australian who pays by card, checks the weather or boards a plane.

The first step is knowing exactly what we depend on. The next is deciding, together, how much of its protection we are prepared to leave to others.

Rajat Kulshrestha is the co-founder and chief executive officer at Space Machines Company.