Rocket Report: Lack of transparency on Ariane 6, Drastic cuts Down Under

Enlarge / SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off from Kennedy Space Center carrying the Jupiter-3 mission. (credit: SpaceX)

Welcome to Edition 6.05 of the Rocket Report! This week's newsletter has the distinction of including not one, but two items of news from Australia. Unfortunately, one of the items suggests rough waters lie ahead for the country's young commercial space industry.

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Australian industry faces cuts. In June the Australian government cut a $1.2 billion Earth science program, and the cut has been reverberating through the country's nascent commercial space industry since then, the Australian Broadcast Corporation reports. "This is an industry-wide hit," Bec Shrimpton, the director of Defense Strategy and National Security at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told the publication. "The confidence has gone out of the sector, which means that across the board companies are not attracting investment. The ability to attract major money here is gone for a number of companies."