Matthew Colless (centre) presents a 3D printed model of the Giant Magellan Telescope to the Minister for Industry, Hon Ian Macfarlane (left) as ANU Vice Chancellor Ian Young looks on.
Australian space scientists will no longer need to go offshore to build satellites, following the completion of the Advanced Instrumentation and Technology Centre (AITC) at The Australian National University. The Minister for Industry, Ian Macfarlane officially opened the Centre. "Australia is doubly blessed because Mt Stromlo also has a long heritage of combining scientific and engineering excellence to design, manufacture and test the high precision instruments which support cutting edge research that I think we often take for granted in Australia but which we should always be proud of,” Mr Macfarlane said. The space sector generates up to $1.6 billion in revenue every year and employs over 4,000 scientists, engineers, policy makers and support personnel. During the opening, Minister Macfarlane announced that ANU has signed two major contracts totalling over $11 million for projects at the AITC. ANU has snared a $5 million design contract for one of the first instruments to be installed on the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), the GMT Integral Field Spectrometer. "This will help find answers to questions about such cosmic mysteries as the formation of galaxies, dark matter and dark energy,” Mr Macfarlane said.
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