Joint Announcement by the United States of America and Australia on Bilateral Cooperation in the Civil Use of GPS and Civil Space Activities

Officials from the Governments of the United States of America and Australia met in Washington, D.C., on October 26-27, 2010, to review progress under and build future activities on the Joint Delegation Statement on Cooperation in the Civil Use of GPS and Space-Based Positioning Navigation and Timing (PNT) Systems and Applications signed on April 19, 2007, at Canberra, Australia.

The first day's discussion covered the broad and growing use of the U.S. Global Positioning system (GPS) and its augmentations in the air transport field, the installation of ground monitoring stations that will improve performance of current and emerging Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and applications for GPS including national spatial reference systems, weather forecasting, climate observation, space weather, and important economic uses of GPS time. The second day's discussion focused on U.S. and Australian space policy developments, long term sustainability of space activities and bilateral space science cooperation.

The United States and Australia have a long history of civil space-related cooperation. We are looking to strengthen collaboration by pursuing work on a long term strategic approach setting out a core framework that will provide the backbone and direction for our future civil space collaborative efforts.

The framework will encourage mutual benefits to both countries by promoting skills and knowledge development and transfer, the sharing of resources and information, capabilities development, and will encourage the peaceful use of and safe and responsible operations in space. This cooperative framework will identify mechanisms to support monitoring and managing the space environment, including reducing the threat of satellite collisions and space debris. It will ensure resilient access to those space systems on which we now rely, and on those important to our future national security, economic, environmental and social well-being. It will explore opportunities for fair and open global trade and commerce for commercial space systems, ground-based capabilities, and related activities.

The framework will encompass collaboration on important space applications such as satellite-based land and sea remote sensing, climate change research and meteorology, and space-based PNT, as well as opportunities for early discussions on new systems and future civil space-related missions under development.

Relevant agencies from the U.S. and Australia will consult periodically to pursue the goals of the proposed core framework on cooperation. A review of civil space related cooperative activities between the two countries will be conducted annually.

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Michael Green
Australian Head of Delegation

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Kenneth Hodgkins
U.S. Head of Delegation

October 27, 2010

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