In 2020, the Australian Space Agency and the Government of Western Australia’s Department of Jobs, Tourism, Science and Innovation agreed to fund a program to address their shared goals of, firstly, increasing the value of Australia’s space economy, particularly through the use of space data, and secondly, to triple the workforce of the Australian space industry, from the current 10,000 strong workforce to 30,000, by 2030.

The Curtin Institute for Data Science and the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre were jointly charged with delivering on these goals and, together, formed the Australian Space Data Analysis Facility. In order to achieve its remit, ASDAF identified two key areas of focus: increase the space economy by providing analytics for commercialising space data and increase the size of the workforce with training concerning access to and use of space data.