In an Australian first, South Australian owned and manufactured satellite Kanyini was successfully launched onboard a SpaceX rocket from the United States.

Kanyini is the first State Government-funded satellite in the nation and was built by a local team of South Australian-based companies – SmartSat CRC, Inovor and Myriota.

The $6.5 million mission is helping to create hi tech jobs in the state’s space sector and develop vital space capabilities in the State.

Now that Kanyini is in orbit, the next milestone for the project is to establish stable communications through an operations centre located at Inovor Technologies in Lot Fourteen, Adelaide.

Once fully commissioned, Kanyini will deliver critical space data for use by government and research institutions, particularly in the areas of sustainability and climate impacts.

The research initiatives to be undertaken by Kanyini include early bushfire detection – with technology that can detect fires from space 500 times faster than traditional processing.

The satellite will also support a program – led by South Australian Department for Environment and Water and Greening Adelaide – to sense urban heat islands in the state.

Data collected by Kanyini will also be used to develop robust and trustworthy predictive AI capabilities that can accurately predict natural disaster events such as landslides and flooding, being led by Queensland University of Technology and European Space Agency Phi-Lab.