UNSW Canberra and the Australian National University will each receive a share of $750,000. Half will go towards establishing UNSW Canberra's Space Mission Design Facility while the remainder will be shared between the two universities for a joint quantum communications project.

UNSW Canberra Space director Russell Boyce said the Space Mission Design Facility would be run in collaboration with partners in the UK. The $800,000 project, which will complement existing technology at ANU, is expected to have run at least three space missions by the end of 2017.

"It will enable a collaborative environment in which people, different teams, scientists and engineers can hotbed and accelerate the design of space missions and understand whether they'll be viable," he said.

"It will be a large room with state of the art computer facilities, state of the art software, and also tele-presence capability in the longer-term."

The ANU-UNSW collaboration will establish and demonstrate the technology for the ACT to host a quantum ground station to support secure space communication links. The total project will cost $675,000.

"With our quantum technology capabilities, of which we are world leaders ... combined with our space capabilities ... we're able to put together systems that are unhackable that would enable communications from a ground station, for example here in Canberra, from a satellite, across to another satellite, and down to another ground station," Professor Boyce said.

"That provides very interesting opportunities, partly for a national security purposes, and partly also for sectors such as the finance sector."

Higher Education, Training and Research Minister Meegan Fitzharris said the ACT was keen to tap into the $17 billion earmarked in the Defence White Paper.

"It's a huge opportunity and if we can capture some of that and a growing part of that over the coming years there's an enormous opportunity for Canberra," she said.