Geoscience Australia and Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand have signed a $187.4 million contract with Inmarsat to boost global positioning accuracy in the South Pacific region.
Under the contract, a new I-8 satellite from Inmarsat will deliver the augmented services, known as SouthPAN, from 2027.
Two satellites will replace Inmarsat’s 4F1 satellite, which is currently delivering SouthPAN; the second is yet to be contracted.
When the two satellites are in service, they will provide redundancy for SouthPAN, ensuring the continuous broadcast of SouthPAN signals, Geoscience Australia said in a media release.
A 4F1 satellite outage in April stranded GPS-dependent agricultural equipment in Australia and other regions.
“SouthPAN provides accurate, reliable and real-time positioning services across all of Australia and New Zealand’s land and maritime zones without the need for mobile phone or internet coverage," Geoscience Australia stated.
"It will improve positioning accuracy to as little as 10 centimetres.”
As well as applications in transport, construction, resources and agriculture, a safety-of-life certified SouthPAN will be offered for applications such as aircraft landing operations.
The SouthPAN satellite-based augmentation systems (SBAS) replaces differential GPS (DGPS) which had been in operation in Australia since the 1990s.
As the Australian Maritime Safety Authority explained, DGPS’s coverage was limited to medium frequency radio bands and was discontinued in Australia in 2020.
Services provided under SouthPAN include Level 1 SBAS, the aeronautical radio navigation service which services safety-of-life applications; dual frequency multi-constellation SBAS; and precise point positioning, which provides 15cm horizontal accuracies.
Lockheed Martin was contracted earlier this year to provide ground station infrastructure in New Zealand.
Geoscience Australia is currently seeking expressions of interest from landholders to host ground infrastructure.
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