Full membership of the European Southern Observatory would cost Australia around $400 million over ten years — but a new economic analysis by UNSW Sydney argues the country is already missing out on far more. With astronomy generating roughly $330 million in annual economic value today, and the world’s largest telescope, the Extremely Large Telescope, set to begin operations in 2030, the case for joining ESO is being put in unusually concrete terms.
Here’s an interesting counterpoint to the government’s recent decision to withdraw from the European Southern Observatory.
A new report from UNSW Sydney, authored by economist Professor Richard Holden and Head of Physics Professor Sarah Brough, makes the economic case for why full ESO membership would be money well spent.
The headline number: full membership would cost roughly 400 million dollars over ten years, with the report estimating Australia’s existing astronomy and astrophysics research already generates around 330 million dollars in economic value every year — before accounting for any uplift from ESO access. When you frame it that way, the investment looks rather different.
The centrepiece of the ESO opportunity is the Extremely Large Telescope — the ELT — currently under construction on Cerro Armazones in Chile’s Atacama Desert, about 20 kilometres from the Very Large Telescope at Paranal. When it opens around 2030, the ELT will be the largest optical and infrared telescope ever built, with a primary mirror spanning nearly 40 metres. It’s expected to be transformative for everything from characterising the atmospheres of Earth-like exoplanets to observing the very first galaxies formed after the Big Bang.
For Australian researchers, full ESO membership would mean guaranteed access to the ELT and to ESO’s existing suite of world-class observatories — instruments that no single country could build or operate alone.
But the report’s argument isn’t purely scientific. It points to a downstream economic ecosystem that comes with major telescope projects. Building and operating instruments at the frontier of optical and infrared astronomy requires extraordinarily specialised components — adaptive optics systems, ultra-precise actuators, custom detectors. Major ESO contracts create real opportunities for Australian companies in high-tech manufacturing and precision engineering. The report identifies this industrial engagement as a concrete, quantifiable benefit separate from the scientific returns.
Professor Brough put it plainly: there are still enormous questions about the nature of the cosmos that only projects like the ELT will help answer. Understanding the earliest galaxies requires instruments of this scale.
This report was released before the government announced its withdrawal decision — which, as the Australian Academy of Science has since argued, directly contradicts the Astronomy Decadal Plan’s recommendation that full ESO membership is essential to Australia’s research future.