In the three-and-a-half years since astronaut Andrew Thomas publicly urged Australia to play a leading role in space tourism, the idea has struggled to get off the ground.

Despite prominent calls to develop our own space agency, including from Dr Thomas himself, a federal review into that proposal is not expected to be ready for another six months.

But the campaign is likely to get another boost at next week's 68th International Astronautical Congress, which is being held in Adelaide for the first time.

"I hope Australia will seize the opportunity and start participating deeply," Adelaide-born Dr Thomas said.

"The political will to do it is slowly growing. We're not there yet."

"The space sector worldwide is something like $400 billion and it's growing at 8 per cent a year.

"We need to make a very sound business case for it."

Dr Thomas said there are strong economic reasons for Australia to develop a space agency. ( ABC News: Tom Fedorowytsch )

Dr Thomas will be among about 3,500 participants at the conference, and was at the South Australian Museum today for the opening of an exhibition on his shuttle expeditions.

He said that, internationally, giant leaps in the field of space travel have tended to come from big private players in recent years.

"The space sector's going through a big transition. We've seen the emergence of commercial providers like Elon Musk and SpaceX, who have drastically driven down the cost of launch services," he said.

"We are also seeing the use of miniaturisation on a huge scale, so that tiny satellites can now be built for less than $1 million.

"The market is opening up for small players to create business models and generate revenue. It's a very dynamic landscape in the space business."

Space about 'more than just astronauts'

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Dr Thomas is the second Australian to have ventured into space, and went on four trips in nine years. His first mission was in 1996, but his most challenging came two years later.

"That was to fly to the Russian Mir space station where I lived for 20 weeks with two cosmonauts who didn't speak English," he said.

"We were orbiting the Earth 16 times a day in zero gravity."

He spacewalked for the first time in 2001 to carry out works on the International Space Station.

"I was outside for six and a half hours," he said.

Dr Thomas spacewalked for the first time in 2001. ( ABC News: Tom Fedorowytsch )

In 2005, he returned for a final time, in what was the first NASA shuttle launch since the Columbia disaster.

The exhibition Spectacular Space, celebrating Dr Thomas's career, will be on show until early next year.

"You're not going to see a lot of 'gee whiz, Star Trek type' stuff," he said.

"These are rather more prosaic things — samples of food, samples of clothing... things I used on a day-to-day basis during a flight."

Memorabilia with an Australian flavour that was taken into space. ( ABC News: Tom Fedorowytsch )

Dr Thomas said he hopes more Australians get to experience the joy of space travel, but emphasised it is about more than mere joyriding.

"Space is more than just astronauts," he said.

"It's about monitoring the health of the environment, the health of the oceans. It's about national security. And that's really where the space sector can contribute to Australian economic wellbeing for years to come."