It comes as a Queensland parliamentary inquiry investigates job creation opportunities in the state arising from the establishment of an Australian space industry. Denise Johnston, from the Department of State Development, Manufacturing, Infrastructure and Planning, said a rocket launch site could be built on private or public land. "If industry was willing to build its own launch facility then that would be, I think, a good outcome, that industry leading and not relying on government intervention," she told the parliamentary inquiry on Monday. Australia's first commercial space centre was being planned in the Northern Territory, but Ms Johnston said there could also be benefits in having a launch site in Queensland, which also had the benefit of being near the equator. "There are different orbits to which space vehicles can be launched into, and so where you are geographically positioned influences, I guess, the orbits that are of most use to you," she said.

"Given that we [Queensland] are on the east coast and Northern Territory is obviously in a different geographic position, there would be the opportunity to use each of those sites for different sorts of launches." Ms Johnston said a launch site would not create a large number of jobs, which would instead be generated through the space industry supply chain. Loading Ms Johnston said Queensland was well-placed to benefit from the space industry, as it had a strong manufacturing sector, was home to numerous international and national companies for Earth observation and data collection analysis, such as DigitalGlobe and Boeing, and a strong research sector at its top universities. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk met with Australian Space Agency chief Megan Clark in July, while Ms Johnston said the space industry was a "priority focus" for the Queensland government.

The state development department has also started work on a detailed economic assessment of the opportunities of the space sector and a space industry capability audit. However, Ms Johnston said Australia did not have the capability, time or budget required to develop its own "end-to-end space ecosystem". "Broadly speaking, the space industry supply chain begins with the development and launch of the space craft and ends with the application of the data delivered by the space craft," she said. It was not the first time Queensland has aimed for the stars. In 1986, then-premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen announced plans for the world's first commercial spaceport, to be known as the Cape York Spaceport, which he hoped would be a rocket launching site and space transport project.