In 2022 the world sits at the cusp of humans returning to the Moon, and Australia is planning a level of active involvement that goes far beyond the management of a few passing radio signals.

The Federal Government has committed more than $850 million to the civil space sector since establishing the Australian Space Agency in 2018, with its current mission to triple the size of the local sector by 2030 to $12 billion, and to create an extra 20,000 new jobs.

The last two years have seen Australia join in the signing of the Artemis Accords and global momentum toward an international wave of lunar exploration. Within months, the first Commercial Lunar Payload Services landers will be touching down on the lunar surface, inaugurating a new era of commercially-driven development. Last year NASA signed the first symbolic space resources contract, and the Australian Space Agency announced the Trailblazer rover program to apply Australian mining and remote operations expertise to the Moon.

In this exciting, fast-moving environment, the space community is making decisions that will shape the future of the cislunar economy. The scientific, engineering, legal, and policy questions that we have gathered together to ask at past Forums are more pertinent than ever. After a longer than usual gap between events due to COVID-19, the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research and the UNSW School of Minerals and Energy Resources Engineering are excited to host the fifth biannual Off-Earth Mining Forum, hosting speakers and delegates from national and international research, government, and industry across the a broad spectrum of the burgeoning space resources sector.

Conference Chairs:

• Prof. Andrew Dempster, Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research, UNSW Sydney
• Prof. Serkan Saydam, School of of Minerals and Energy Resources Engineering, UNSW Sydney
• Prof. Gavin Conibeer, School of Photovoltaic & Renewable Energy Engineering