The ROOK Concept
The ROOK Constellation is a planned sovereign, space-based surveillance network engineered to reinforce Australia’s security posture across maritime, terrestrial, and cyber domains—particularly in the strategically significant Pacific and Great Southern Ocean theatres.
Being designed as a persistent orbital presence, the ROOK Constellation delivers high-fidelity Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) through a distributed array of satellites equipped with optical, thermal, and multispectral sensors. This multi-camera payload architecture will ensure continuous, resilient coverage across a range of weather and light conditions, enabling rapid threat detection, vessel tracking, and anomaly identification in even the most remote or contested regions.
Being designed as more than just a maritime asset, ROOK supports the protection of both centralised and decentralised national infrastructure—ranging from undersea cables and port facilities to terrestrial energy grids, dams, data centres and remote communications nodes. The system’s intended modular, scalable design allows for real-time responsiveness to emerging threats, as well as secure data integration across allied platforms and sovereign command centres.
With its planned capacity to operate autonomously, remain adaptable to evolving mission requirements, and seamlessly interface with defence, emergency management, and infrastructure security stakeholders, the ROOK Constellation is intended to represent a critical step forward in securing Australia’s interests in the space domain and beyond.
Specific Planning
In planning is a 6U or 12U CubeSat in a polar orbit (~500–600 km) is designed for ocean-based surveillance to support maritime domain awareness.
It will be designed to carry a multi-format imaging payload including a visible EO camera (≤5 m GSD), near-infrared sensor for wake/oil slick detection, and a thermal infrared imager for night-time vessel tracking. Other imaging capabilities are also being considered for other mission parameters.
Optional hyperspectral imaging will enable advanced anomaly detection. Onboard edge processing will be designed to prioritise critical data for X-band or optical downlink. The CubeSat will feature deployable solar arrays (~50 W), precision ADCS, and real-time command via UHF/S-band and other communication media.
The system is aimed to enable persistent ocean monitoring, dark vessel detection, and marine environmental assessments from a compact platform.