Australia's data-gathering capability has been significantly boosted by a multi-million-dollar deal allowing the CSIRO to access a powerful British satellite.
The national science research organisation has reached an agreement with a UK-based firm to use its NovaSAR satellite to capture images of the earth and sea.
Under the $10.45 million, seven-year deal, CSIRO will be granted partial control of the satellite, which will be launched later this year.
Principal research scientist Dr Alex Held said the CSIRO would have access to "10 per cent of the total amount of imagery it can collect on a daily basis".
"We can basically turn on the camera or turn it off as it flies over and collect the amount of data we want," he said.
Dr Held said it was the first time the CSIRO would have access to such a capability, and there would also be emergency applications.
"In disaster situations we need to map the damage of, say, cyclones on crops," he said.
"We have a computer terminal sitting in Australia and we can basically program the satellite from here through the British operations centre to collect data anywhere we want around the world, with highest priority over our region."
The announcement was made at the week-long International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide.
Dr Held said the deal with Surrey Satellite Technology would also allow for tasks such as detecting illegal shipping and deforestation.
According to Industry Minister Arthur Sinodinos, Australia was one of the "largest users" of data gathered in space.
But previously, the CSIRO has only had access to satellite imagery that has been collected by other agencies.
The "SAR" element of NovaSAR stands for Synthetic Aperture Radar — a technology that, according to Dr Held, is able to pick up wavelengths of light invisible to the human eye.
