The Critical Design Review (CDR) for the Southern Positioning Augmentation Network (SouthPAN) system has been completed by Lockheed Martin and Geoscience Australia.
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 companys 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 toward SouthPAN achieving a Safety-of-Life certification to support civil aviation operations, with the system expected to become fully operationally capable in 2028.
Lockheed Martin established SouthPAN services utilising its Second-Generation Satellite-Based Augmentation System (SBAS), which generates augmentation messages by computing frequencies from both Galileo and GPS constellations through multiple reference stations. These corrections enable accuracy as close as ten centimeters, greatly benefitting sectors like agriculture, aviation, construction, maritime, rail and more.
SouthPAN 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 the system and enhance precision navigation.
