From Banking to Blastoff: The Aussie Startup Taking On SpaceX
- By Lachlan Colquhoun
- January 20, 2025

Many people were skeptical when Adam Gilmour abandoned a career in banking to pursue dreams of creating a space aviation company, but more than a decade later 2025 may be the year that he achieves vindication.
Gilmour founded Gilmour Space in 2013 with his brother James with a vision to provide space launch services to the satellite market from a private launching site in North Queensland.
The company is now cleared for the maiden flight of its 23-meter Eris TestFlight1 rocket early this year, marking the first orbital launch attempt of an Australian-made rocket since the 1970s.
Now that it has a permit for the launch, Gilmour is waiting on clearance from aviation regulator CASA before taking the rocket from its hangar for the launch.
Investors have warmed to the Gilmour story, and the company secured an AUD55 million Series D funding round in February, led by state government-owned Queensland Investment Corporate with participation from venture capital firms Blackbird and Main Sequence. A Series C funding round in 2021 raised AUD61 million.
The company has around 200 employees and a supply chain with 300 partners.
Gilmour Space spent much of 2024 testing the systems for the launch from the Bowen Orbital Spaceport but also inked a significant contract with a company keen to use its services and use Indian launch partners for Gilmour’s satellite product.
Collaboration with India
In November 2024, Gilmour teamed up with Perth-based Earth observation company LatConnect60 in a second deal with Gilmour’s 100-kilogram satellite “bus”, ElaraSat, in 2026.
The LatConnect60 project is a demonstration mission to provide high-resolution insights into methane and carbon emissions from space.
LatConnect60 will use the emissions data to support agriculture, resources, and other sectors in reducing their carbon footprint.
“In-space manufacturing is the next evolution of our industry capacity as humans.”
ElaraSat is a platform that acts like a chassis for a satellite payload, such as sensors, cameras and computers, providing power, attitude control, communications, and structural support.
The deal is part of the Australian Space Agency’s International Space Investment India Projects program.
LatConnect60’s Short-Wave Infrared Imagery Satellite (SWIRSAT) will carry advanced sensors and an edge computer provided by another maturing Australian startup, Sydney-based Spiral Blue.
The components will be integrated into the ElaraSat bus at Gilmour Space’s Queensland facility and launched by Skyroot Aerospace in India.
“SWIRSAT will generate critical insights from very high spatial resolution Earth observation data in the short wave infrared range,” LatConnect60 founder and chief executive officer Venkat Pillay said.
“It will pinpoint and quantify source-level carbon emissions at a high accuracy, filling a key data gap in the market from Low Earth Orbit (LEO).”
Also involved in the Australian-Indian collaboration is Spiral Blue, which worked with Indian company KaleidEO in late 2023 to conduct machine learning data analysis in space using Spiral Blue’s SE-1 space edge computer.
Combining Spiral Blue’s expertise and SE-1 computer in orbit, KaleidEO’s road mapping machine learning algorithm resulted in a 99.7% data size reduction from 1,004 to 3.063 mb, using AI hardware developed by Spiral Blue.
The company claims SE-1 is the most powerful computer ever built for use in space outside of a space station, giving it the capacity to process massive amounts of data in real time.
SE-1 is unique in that it enables customers to run their existing code in space without needing a compiler, resulting in faster time to orbit than ever before.
Catalyst for an eco-system
The rise of flagship companies such as Gilmour Space has paralleled the momentum of Australia’s space industry, which received a boost when the Government created the Australian Space Agency in 2018.
Based in Adelaide, the agency has been the catalyst for a growing ecosystem of startups working with large international primes to develop momentum for a viable space industry.
The industry had a setback late last year when Equatorial Launch Australia, which had launched rockets with NASA at its Arnhem Space Centre in the Northern Territory, had a falling out with the traditional owners of the land and threatened to move their facility to far north Queensland.
ELA had been aiming for 55 equatorial launches a year from the site and was signing up a pipeline of customers. South Korean company INNOSPACE signed a contract to fire orbital rockets from the site, with the first of 12 launches planned for this year.
While ELA’s future location is uncertain, Australia’s third launch facility in South Australia appears to be going ahead, with Southern Launch developing its facility on Eyre Peninsula.
Southern Launch’s facility is both for launch and to capture spacecraft that re-enter Earth’s atmosphere, and the company is working with U.S. company Varda, which has an ambitious plan to create pharmaceutical drugs in orbit.
Varda has developed a capsule called V2, which is predicated on a belief that in-space manufacturing could lead to the development of lifesaving treatments.
The V2 capsule was launched in January in a SpaceX Falcon rocket as part of the Transporter-12 mission carrying 131 payloads.
It is planned that the V2 will return to Earth for recovery by Southern Launch.
Lloyd Damp, the chief executive of Southern Launch, said: “The successful launch of the W-2 capsule is only the beginning of this incredibly exciting mission. Our team is now focused on the safe return and recovery of the capsule to the Koonibba Test Range."
“In-space manufacturing is the next evolution of our industry capacity as humans. We are so proud to bring this mission to Australia, and this first mission signals a new wave of excitement as to what is possible both here on Earth and in space.”
Image credit: iStockphoto/Alones Creative
Lachlan Colquhoun
Lachlan Colquhoun is the Australia and New Zealand correspondent for CDOTrends and the NextGenConnectivity editor. He remains fascinated with how businesses reinvent themselves through digital technology to solve existing issues and change their business models.