A Defence Trailblazer collaborative project with Space Machines Company (SMC) and the University of Adelaide’s AI for Space Group has built an orbital robotics testbed at its space simulation facilities.
“Using the testbed to simulate mission conditions for the software is crucial to ensuring reliability of the algorithms in the real Space environment,” University of Adelaide researcher, Mohsi Jawaid, said. “With this comprehensive testing, we can confidently and responsibly claim mission readiness for our AI solutions.”
Located in the Extraterrestrial Environmental Simulation (EXTERRES) Laboratory at the university’s Roseworthy Campus, the proximity operations testbed will accelerate the project goal of developing spaceborne perception algorithms for SMC’s Maitri mission, scheduled for launch in late 2026.
“This testbed represents a major milestone in the advancement of space-borne perception and intelligence for a range of proximity operations and servicing applications, capabilities essential for safeguarding the growing volume of on-orbit Space assets,” SMC CCO and project lead, Mark Ramsay, stated. “We’re working with Defence Trailblazer to address this critical gap in Australia and bolster sovereign space capabilities.”
The testbed has emulated space flight dynamics through a combination of robotic manipulation, lighting and display simulation, tight environmental control and sensor instrumentation, with motion-tracking to monitor each movement.
The testbed will be utilised to design and test software that will be deployed onboard the Australian Space Agency-backed Maitri mission to track real satellites and space debris. The AI-based algorithms have been developed by the AI for Space Group, led by Professor Tat-Jun Chin, Defence Trailblazer Co-Theme Lead for Defence Space Technologies.
These algorithms are critical for Space domain awareness (SDA), which includes predicting the behaviour of objects in the Space environment and determining threats.
The algorithms will be rigorously tested for object detection, tracking, semantic segmentation and pose estimation. A key advantage of the ground-based testbed is that it can expand the breadth of testing scenarios without requiring data from Space missions, a significant step towards ensuring the safety of future operations.
The project, which also involves Scarlet Lab, a SmartSat CRC initiative; and Space Control STC at Defence Science Technology Group, is supported by funding from Defence Trailblazer’s Accelerating Sovereign Industrial Capabilities (ASIC) program.