Aust, to join search for extraterrestrials

Press, 11 January 1983, Page 21

Aust, to join search for extraterrestrials

NZPA Sydney The Tidbinbilla tracking station near Canberra will be used in a new search by American scientists for extraterrestrials. The deep space communication centre run by the Science and Technology Department is one of three chosen to take part in the search.

This search is said to be the most sensitive and thorough search for intelligent life on other worlds ever mounted. The other centres involved in the project are in California and Spain, and with Australia the entire night sky will be covered. The United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration has a $1.5 million grant to cover the first of five years research and development of signal-

processing equipment for the project. The United States Congress previously refused funds for the project but a recent petition signed by about 70 leading scientists throughout the world, with the raging popularity of the film "E-T,” may have changed their minds. A N.A.S.A. spokeman in Canberra, Mr Walt Larkin, said preliminarry tests could start at Tidbinbilla in 1983 and the serious search could be underway by the mid1980s.

Mr Larkin said he suspected the search would turn up many things scientists would be unable to explain quickly and that they would have to learn a lot more about radio emissions from natural sources before they could say radio signals came from intelligent life elsewhere.