Under the agreement, Myriota has booked a spot for South Australia’s homegrown satellite to blast off on a SpaceX Transporter mission in 2023.

Kanyini is a Pitjantjatjara term describing the “principle of responsibility and unconditional love for all of creation.”

The satellite will help improve bushfire preparedness, response and resilience, and monitoring inland and coastal water qualities.

Myriota, Inovor Technologies, SmartSat Cooperative Research Centre, and the South Australian Government are collaborating to build and design the spacecraft.

“The IoT payload will add to the Myriota Network, communicating with devices and sensors on the Earth’s surface, working together with hyperspectral imaging collected from the earth observation payload to enable a wide array of applications. Kanyini will provide access to critical data anywhere and everywhere it’s needed to help improve and monitor water quality, crop health and bushfire resilience,” said Myriota chief technology officer and co-founder David Haley.

Leading the mission, SmartSat has already factored the data collected by Kanyini and HyperScout 2 into a number of projects which will drive research and build experience in operating Earth’s observation payloads in space.

“Securing the launch with Isilaunch is another exciting step for the Kanyini mission which will pioneer sovereign technology in projects such as OzFuel, which will gather real-time data, monitor potentially hazardous conditions specific to Australia’s eucalypt-dominant bushland, and improve our bushfire preparedness, response and resilience,” said SmartSat CEO and professor Andy Koronios.

“South Australia is leading the charge in accelerating innovation and growth in the space sector and this mission presents an important opportunity for local industry to play a key role in furthering our national endeavours to build sovereign EO capability, provide secure access to data from space and expand our satellite design, and manufacturing expertise,” said South Australian Deputy Premier and Minister for Defence and Space Industries Susan Close.

"Our team, which includes local representation in Australia for smooth and fast interaction with the customer, is looking forward to completing all the necessary launch activities to get Kanyini to space,” said Isilaunch director Abe Bonnema.

This first appeared in the subscription newsletter CommsWire on 25 October 2022.