Canberra Now Vital Space-Tracking Link

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31139, 16 August 1966, Page 11

Canberra Now Vital Space-Tracking Link

Amid the rugged hills south-west of Canberra, in the Australian Capital Territory, one of the world’s most comprehensive spacecraft tracking complexes is being developed. When complete it will be able to track and communicatae with all American space vehicles, whether far or near, manned or unmanned, .fust as the lights of Perth were a friendly beacon to the first United States astronaut, John Glenn, so might the signals from Canberra convey a future welcome to an expedition returning home from Mars.

Since 1960, when the Australian and United States Governments formally agreed ) to co-operate in this field,; many tracking stations have) been established on the Aus-i tralian sub-continent. The first) was Woomera, with a large) 85-foot dish antenna for tracking spacecraft many millions) of miles distant from the) earth. Woomera also worked with the second station, at Muchea in Western Australia, in tracking the Project Mercury flights. Then a new station at Carnarvon replaced Muchea for communicating with manned spaceflights. In addition. Carnarvon tracks many other satellites because of its key location almost at the antipode of Cape Kennedy. Practically every satellite launched from the Cape passes near Carnarvon on its) first orbit.

Part Of Network The next major station was built at Tidbinbilla near Canberra. Like Woomera it has an 85-foot dish designed to catch the incredibly faint signals from spacecraft visiting other planets. Tidbinbilla and Woomera are part of a world-wide network known as the Deep Space Instrumentation Facility, with other stations in South Africa, Spain and California. Last year another station was opened at Orroral Valley, sixteen miles as the crow flies from Tidbinbilla, and yet another was begun at Honey-) suckle Creek, about four miles) from Orroral. It is due to| open quite soon. A further . station is under construction)) at Cooby Creek, near Too- . woomba in Queensland, and it ) too will be opened this year. The concentration of three of the four latest stations in the Australian Capital Territory is probably for political 1 reasons and access to lines of ) communication. In addition they will take advantage of the A.C.T’s abundance of ■

Alert Sounded An emergency alert was sounded at Auckland airport on Saturday morning when an Electra chartered by N.A.C. turned back minutes after its take-off for Wellington to land with one of its four propellers feathered. The aircraft left Auckland with 35 passengers aboard at 8 a.m. and turned back when 70 miles out. Ambulances and fire-fight-ing squads stood by but were not needed. The trouble arose from a fault in a fuel flow gauge in No. 2 engine The aircraft left later for Wellington.

secluded sites, sheltered byl steep ridges from man-made radio and electrical interference. The Canberra stations; are of permanent construe-! tion unlike the one at Cooby) Creek which is transportable, and could be moved at any time. Cooby Creek is designed to gather data from a forthcoming series of five applications Technology satellites which will test new equipment for communications and weather-watching in orbit high above the equator. 85-foot Dish

The Orroral station has the task of collecting data from about a score of scientific satellites. It uses an 85-foot dish in addition to several : smaller antennas and can I track, command and receive data from three satellites simultaneously. Like TidbinI billa, it is run by private ; industry under contract to the Australian Department of I Supply and the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration. These stations each employ about 150 trained personnel and cost almost two million dollars a year to run. The same will be true of the Honeysuckle Creek Station when it begins tracking manned spacecraft later this year. A microwave link now being constructed between the Canberra stations will ) weld them into one powerful ) complex for monitoring ) vitally important events such as moon landings, when it is planned to give the world full television coverage of the flight and actual landing within a matter of seconds after the event. Already plans are underway for expanding and improving the Canberra complex. There will be another 85-foot dish to back up the Honeysuckle Creek station during the Project Apollo moon flights and, provided Congress approves the expenditure. a new deep space tracking station will be built near Tidbinbilla. This will be ) the biggest of them all, for lit will have a 210-foot dia-l imeter dish antenna similar to) | a prototype recently dedi-i icated at the Goldstone com-; plex in the Mojave Desert, j California, at a cost of 14) million dollars. For Different Purposes Australia already has a> fully steerable 210-foot; antenna which is used as a radio telescope by the C.5.1.R.0. at Parkes, in New; South Wales. The Parkes and Goldstone antennae are equal

in size and superficially similar in appearance, but there the resemblance ends, s They are different in design; t and purpose. The Parkes i antenna can listen to . mysterious sources of radio > noise at the edge of the I known universe while the s new Tidbinbilla antenna will t bt able to send instructions s and receive messages from a 1 spacecraft at the edge of the solar system, over 3000 - million miles away. ; At the moment these spacecraft tracking stations are a i mixed blessing to Australia, i They are giving Australia a t place in the exploration of space and are bringing money

and advanced technology’ into the country. On the other hand they are swallowing up large numbers of highly trained electronics engineers and technicians needed elsewhere in the country. They are staffed entirely by Australians and new Australians. In the long run, however, the stations will feed back advanced skill and know-how into the Australian communications industry. This will more than repay the present drain on Australia’s technical manpower.