Inovor wins Buccaneer contract

Adelaide based SME Inovor has won a $2.5 million contract against international competition to build the cube-sat-sized satellite bus for Defence’s Buccaneer Main Mission. The company won a prestigious AMA Foundation Inn ovation Award at Avalon 2019 for its work on the Apogee space situational awareness program.

The Buccaneer program, headed by DST in partnership with UNSW at ADFA, is designed to help improve Defence’s understanding of earth’s outer atmosphere, in particular the ionosphere which is crucial to the Jindalee Over the Horizon Radar (JORN).

The Buccaneer program also provides Defence with a precious opportunity to manage an end to end space mission, from designing the payload to handling the launch, in-orbit management and exploitation of the satellite’s sensor data. The first cube-sat launch under the Buccaneer program took place in 2017. The cube-sat was built jointly by DST Group and UNSW ADFA and placed into Low-Earth Orbit.