Kanyini is the first state government-funded satellite worth $6.5 million. It was built by a local team of South Australian-based companies—SmartSat CRC, Inovor, and Myriota.

Last March, Kanyini passed its Environmental Stress Screening (ESS) ahead of its launch.

The screening was conducted at the National Space Test Facility at the Australian National University in Canberra. It confirmed Kanyini’s ability to withstand harsh conditions in space.

Now that Kanyini is in orbit, the next milestone for the project is to establish stable communications through an operations centre located at Inovor Technologies in Lot Fourteen, Adelaide.

Once fully commissioned, Kanyini will deliver critical space data to be leveraged by government and research institutions, particularly in sustainability and climate impacts.

Kanyini was launched to improve Australia’s bushfire detection so the country can detect fires from space 500x faster than traditional processing.

The satellite will also support a program – led by South Australian Department for Environment and Water and Greening Adelaide – to sense urban heat islands in the state.

Data collected by Kanyini will be used to develop AI that can predict natural disaster events such as landslides and flooding.

This initiative is being led by Queensland University of Technology and European Space Agency Phi-Lab.

“We have now realised our mission of seeing homegrown South Australian space technologies launched into low Earth orbit. The coming months will be crucial as the team works to fully operationalise Kanyini and begin reaping the benefits of its data-gathering capabilities,” says SmartSat CRC CEO Andy Koronios.

“Putting anything into space is an extraordinary feat, and the success of this launch of the Kanyini satellite is an excellent achievement, not only for the Kanyini team, including Inovor, but also for the South Australian space sector as a whole,” says Inovor CEO Dr Matt Tetlow.

“This launch is a testament to the collaborative efforts of the Kanyini team in preparing the 6U CubeSat and our onboard IoT payload to withstand the harsh conditions of space,” says Myriota chief technology officer and co-founder Dr David Haley.