SouthPAN Critical Design Review completed

Lockheed Martin and Geoscience Australia say they have successfully completed the Critical Design Review (CDR) for the Southern Positioning Augmentation Network (SouthPAN) — a satellite-based augmentation system (SBAS) that provides improved positioning and navigation services in Australia and New Zealand.

SouthPAN’s early Open Services became live in September 2022, shortly after Lockheed Martin was awarded a $1.18 billion contract from the Australian Government to establish and deliver ongoing SouthPAN services to Australia and New Zealand. The company has been contracted to build the ground segment of SouthPAN, including the network of ground reference stations and satellite uplink facilities.

Lockheed Martin established SouthPAN services utilising its second-generation SBAS, which generates augmentation messages by computing frequencies from both Galileo and GPS constellations through multiple reference stations. These corrections enable positioning accuracy as close as 10 cm, benefiting sectors like agriculture, aviation, construction, maritime, rail and more.

During the CDR, Lockheed Martin and its strategic partners, as well as representatives from Geoscience Australia and Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand, worked together to validate the company’s system and subsystem designs. This activity ensures that all major risks have been identified and resolved and confirms that system interfaces are sufficiently mature to proceed to development, integration and testing.

“The successful SouthPAN CDR represents significant multinational collaboration and industry partnership, demonstrating our shared commitment to enabling next-generation positioning,” said David Ball, Regional Director of Space for Lockheed Martin Australia and New Zealand. “Delivering these navigation services will transform safety and efficiency for many industries that impact our everyday lives.”

The completion of the CDR marks a major step towards SouthPAN achieving safety-of-life certification to support civil aviation operations, with the system expected to become fully operationally capable in 2028.

Image caption: SouthPAN system infrastructure in Uralla, NSW. Image credit: Lockheed Martin.