Posted by Davina Jackson on 2 Dec 2014
By Tim Parsons
Smartphone-driven miniturisation, Big Data techniques, 3D printing, digital culture, startup entrepreneurship. These phenomena, invented on Earth, are having a profound impact on Space.
Specifically, the arena known as NewSpace or Space 2.0: where startup companies are rapid-prototyping tiny, almost disposable, nanosatellites capable of performing Earth observation and space science missions that only a few years ago required massive, five to 10 tonne behemoths costing
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Is the Virtual Australia vision being refreshed? Not officially but various relevant advances are emerging from government agencies.
First promoted in 2005 to attract government funding for the University of Melbourne's Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information (CRC-SI), this world's first 'virtual nations' project (to generate online data simulations of the nation's environmental systems) was abandoned in 2013.
Virtual Australia remains absent from the new '2026 Agenda' for spatial Read More
Australian Government geospatial science leaders have abandoned the decade-long Virtual Australia project to build a national environmental simulations system.
Initially proposed in a 2005 report by Victorian supporters of the University of Melbourne-based Co-operative Research Centre for Spatial Information (CRC-SI), the Virtual Australia vision grew to include the CRC-SI’s second funding bid in 2010, and a satellite research centre in New Zealand (report here).
Now it has emerged that the 
Australia's desert would be an ideal place to build one of the world's first commercial spaceports, claims Enrico Palermo, the Perth-born, California-based operations leader for Sir Richard Branson's The Spaceship Company (TSC).
But in this year's Warren Centre Innovation Lecture, 'Beyond Earth', Palermo claimed our government is well behind the United States in setting up a regulation framework to govern and support commercial spaceship operators.
Working closely with Virgin Galactic to 
After four years spending $20 million of Commonwealth Super Science funding, the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN) is now presenting a promising online 'workbench' for public sector researchers to test and simulate urban development challenges and solutions.
AURIN's Strategic Implementation Co-ordinator, Dr Chris Pettit, this week demonstrated the main Beta 4 capacities of the workbench, which was funded by the Education Investment Fund Super Science Initiative, and 
Queensland's Premier, Campbell Newman, is releasing 1400 new state government datasets for free public use – and hosting a competition for best applications.
The 2014 Premier's Award for Open Data offers $A5000 each for best use, best commercial app and best community app exploiting datasets released via the Queensland Government's Open Data program (based in the Premier's Office). Smaller prizes are offered for best entries from school students and public servants – and Microsoft is sponsoring