China to lose access to Swedish-owned satellite trackers in Australia due to 'complex' market

By political reporter Matthew Doran

Posted Yesterday at 9:53pm, updated 7 hours ago

China will lose access to two important and strategic space satellite-tracking stations in Australia, with their Swedish owners citing the "complexity" of doing business with Beijing.

The Swedish Space Corporation (SSC), owned by the Swedish Government, operates 11 satellite-tracking facilities around the world, including the Dongara and Yatharagga stations south of Geraldton in Western Australia.

The Dongara station is primarily used by US government agencies such as NASA.

The decision comes as China continues its expansion into space exploration, and concerns continue to mount about the country's intelligence-gathering operations in the science and technology sectors.

Last week, the ABC revealed a massive Chinese database contained specific information about Australia's fledgling space industry.

SSC's Anni Bolenuis said the company had found its relatively small size a barrier to effectively doing business with Beijing.

"It has become increasingly difficult for us to handle the complexity of the Chinese market and therefore we have decided to focus on other markets," she told the ABC, speaking from Sweden.

"We will not enter into any new contracts with Chinese customers after the current contracts expire."

Ms Bolenuis would not detail exactly when the contracts were due to run out, but said they were "long-term" deals that "were entered into quite a long time ago".

She also would not be drawn on SSC's specific concerns about China's recent behaviour.

"I think everyone who has followed developments can see that the Chinese market is complex," she said.

"I won't go further into that, but we have clearly seen that it has influenced our view."

In 2008, SSC was spruiking its new office in Beijing as "an important step" to "maintain contacts and give local support to our Chinese customers as well as further explore our possibilities on a fast-growing Chinese space market".

The Yatharagga station was used in 2013 to monitor China's Shenzhou 10 launch, which was the nation's fifth crewed space mission.

The ABC has contacted the office of Industry and Science Minister Karen Andrews for comment.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-21/swedish-tracking-station-in-australia-ends-contracts-with-china/12686974

China to lose access to Swedish-owned satellite trackers in Australia due to 'complex' market

By political reporter Matthew Doran

Posted Yesterday at 9:53pm, updated 7 hours ago

China will lose access to two important and strategic space satellite-tracking stations in Australia, with their Swedish owners citing the "complexity" of doing business with Beijing.

The Swedish Space Corporation (SSC), owned by the Swedish Government, operates 11 satellite-tracking facilities around the world, including the Dongara and Yatharagga stations south of Geraldton in Western Australia.

The Dongara station is primarily used by US government agencies such as NASA.

The decision comes as China continues its expansion into space exploration, and concerns continue to mount about the country's intelligence-gathering operations in the science and technology sectors.

Last week, the ABC revealed a massive Chinese database contained specific information about Australia's fledgling space industry.

SSC's Anni Bolenuis said the company had found its relatively small size a barrier to effectively doing business with Beijing.

"It has become increasingly difficult for us to handle the complexity of the Chinese market and therefore we have decided to focus on other markets," she told the ABC, speaking from Sweden.

"We will not enter into any new contracts with Chinese customers after the current contracts expire."

Ms Bolenuis would not detail exactly when the contracts were due to run out, but said they were "long-term" deals that "were entered into quite a long time ago".

She also would not be drawn on SSC's specific concerns about China's recent behaviour.

"I think everyone who has followed developments can see that the Chinese market is complex," she said.

"I won't go further into that, but we have clearly seen that it has influenced our view."

In 2008, SSC was spruiking its new office in Beijing as "an important step" to "maintain contacts and give local support to our Chinese customers as well as further explore our possibilities on a fast-growing Chinese space market".

The Yatharagga station was used in 2013 to monitor China's Shenzhou 10 launch, which was the nation's fifth crewed space mission.

The ABC has contacted the office of Industry and Science Minister Karen Andrews for comment.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-21/swedish-tracking-station-in-australia-ends-contracts-with-china/12686974

Leaked Chinese database show company's interest in Australia's space and science sector

By political reporter Matthew Doran and political editor Andrew Probyn

Posted TueTuesday 15 SepSeptember 2020 at 4:56am, updated 6ddays ago

Australia's fledgling space sector is proving to be a hot target for Chinese snooping, with Beijing tracking the movement of top-secret equipment from a tracking station outside Canberra to NASA in the United States.

And Commonwealth scientists with world-leading expertise have also been targeted by a Chinese company with links to the People's Liberation Army.

A leaked database developed by Shenzhen-based data company Zhenhua Data, obtained by the ABC as part of an international consortium of media outlets, has more than 70 records that reference CSIRO's staff and classified operations.

One entry shows Zhenhua Data monitored the March 2019 transfer of "scientific equipment" from Canberra's Deep Space Communication Complex at Tidbinbilla all the way across the Pacific Ocean to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

It records the name of the German-flagged container ship that took the cargo, as well as the Los Angeles-based customs company that took possession of the package after it arrived at the Long Beach port.

"This database has got a vast amount of import-export data that is scraped up, presumably, or stolen or supplied somehow from import-export agents," Clive Hamilton from Charles Sturt University told the ABC.

"So this database is not just tracking people, but also tracking the movement of goods which might be of interest to China's intelligence services."

The database also shows Zhenhua spied on CSIRO's "transformational bioinformatics team" which is researching artificial intelligence (AI) and genomics in medicine.

An AI researcher at the Australian National University has also been profiled by the Chinese firm, and Zhenhua has also documented the CSIRO's work in the search for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 and exploration on Mars.

"There'd be hundreds of thousands of references to CSIRO available on the public record," Professor Hamilton said.

"But this database is not indiscriminate, it's curated by people sitting there and deciding what to leave in and what to keep a little bit more of."

Zhenhua's interest in the space sector is not limited to the CSIRO. The entire board of Gilmour Space Technology is profiled in the database.

"We are aware of this incident," a spokesperson for the company told the ABC.

"It is not an ideal situation, of course, but it is not unusual in our industry.

"We recognise that security is an ongoing concern for all companies developing innovative research and technology, and we are continuously evolving our processes and systems to mitigate these risks."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-15/chinese-database-zhenhua-interest-australia-space-science-sector/12662996