DARWIN could soon become the space capital of Australia.

The NT News can reveal the NT Government has been working with an investor who is negotiating a deal that could see Darwin become the first place in Australia from which space vehicles are launched.

The Australian-based investor, who cannot be named, is close to purchasing the Sea Launch spacecraft maritime launch service.

The megastructure, currently based in California, is made up of three parts; the clean room — which is the processing facility based on land, and the two-vessel rocket launcher.

Rockets are made in the clean room, carried on the Commander ship to sea and launched at sea from the launch platform, Odyssey.

media_camera The Sea Launcgh platform. PICTURE: Supplied

Attorney-General John Elferink travelled to Long Beach, California, in January with a staffer from the Department of the Chief Minister to support the investor during negotiations.

Chief Minister Adam Giles said he represented him through the Major Projects and Economic Development portfolios — given Mr Elferink’s “keen personal interest in space travel”.

Mr Elferink told the NT News a lot of work had been done to attract a space industry to the Territory. “Darwin is perilously close to the equator which means (the company) don’t have to travel far at all — so for Sea Launch to travel (from Long Beach) they have to stay at sea for one-and-a-half or two months ... (which makes it a) very expensive exercise,” he said.

“For Darwin, you might be at sea for six hours ... which makes Darwin very, very attractive.” Mr Elferink said the investor was looking at setting up in other destinations but had since ruled them out, so if he was successful in purchasing the rocket launcher the NT was sure to be its home.

“If you’re going to invest this sort of money you want to invest in a place which is politically stable so that’s why Darwin is attractive, that’s why I started and the Northern Territory Government started sniffing around and assisting with this,” he said.

To date, all commercial payloads on the Sea Launch’s specialised Zenit-3SL rockets have been satellites intended for geostationary transfer orbit for telecommunications companies.

Mr Elferink said although he remained “optimistic”, it was far from a done deal. “In January this year the conversation had reached a point where the deal was ready to be done,” he said.

However, there was a slight hiccup with the deal when an unsecured creditor popped up, causing an issue which is now being dealt with in an American court.

Mr Elferink said there was no time frame for when negotiations would recommence.

He said the Federal Government supported the possible development of the industry in Darwin.

“Australia doesn’t have a space industry yet and I’ll be extremely proud if I was involved with the government that brought Australia’s first industry to Australia,” Mr Elferink said.

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