Plans to build satellite monitor get under way

Press, 17 March 1987, Page 26

Plans to build satellite monitor get under way

PA Wellington Plans to build New Zealand’s first privately owned receiving station to collect information gathered by satellite have moved into high gear. Two directors of an Auckland company, Satellite Communications Services, Mr Tom Parkinson and Mr Brian Hight, are visiting Japan, France, the United States and Australia.

They were investigating the market for satellitegathered information, said the director of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research’s division of information technology, Dr Peter Ellis. The company plans to

sell information received through a large antenna dish to be built at Otaki and processed through the D.S.I.R. Division of Information Technology image-processing equipment at Lower Hutt. The Government department will be a subcontractor to Satellite Communications Services.

Already Mr Hight and Mr Parkinson had approached other Government departments and private companies to gauge the market, Dr Ellis said. D.I.T. had also invited tenders from overseas manufacturers of satellitereceiving equipment. Depending on final specifica-

tions the station would cost between $4 million and $lO million, he said. A representative of the French rocket-making company, Societe Europeene de Propulsion, arrived in Wellington on Tuesday to look at New Zealand’s requirements.

Final decision would depend on market demand, Mr Ellis said; All New Zealand parties to the venture were fairly committed and it would be embarrassing if it were turned down now.

It is planned for a New Zealand station to have the capacity to receive images from French, American and European satellites.