As the submarine world remains pretty quiet at the moment, here is an Australian technical achievement:
Paul Shillito, an Englishman, of Curious Droid describes how Australia's Parkes radio telescope worked in record time to help reverse America's Apollo 13, near disaster in 1970.
While it is operated primarily for astronomy research, the Parkes, New South Wales, Australia, radio telescope has a long history of being contracted by NASA and other international space agencies to track and receive data from spacecraft:
· In 1962 it tracked the first interplanetary space mission, Mariner 2, as it flew by the planet Venus, and in 1969 it was a prime receiving station for the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon.
- In 1970 it was called in to help during the Apollo 13 emergency when an explosion crippled the spacecraft while it was en route to the Moon, and its Apollo support continued until the end of the manned lunar missions in December 1972.
- In the 1980s the Parkes telescope was used to receive signals from NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft and the European Space Agency's Giotto spacecraft, and in the 1990s it supported NASA's Galileo mission to Jupiter.
- In the 2000s it tracked various spacecraft at Mars, and in 2005 Parkes was used in an experiment to directly receive signals from the European Space Agency's Huygens spaceprobe as it descended through the atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon, Titan.
- Most recently, in 2012, Parkes played a support role in tracking NASA's Curiosity rover during its descent onto the Martian surface.
The fictional film 'The Dish' was based on the real role that the Parkes telescope played in receiving video footage of the first Moon walk by the crew of Apollo 11 in 1969.
The Parkes radio telescope.
---
Pete
If the spacecraft is in the southern sky then it has to be a southern nation. More importantly the US has transplanted a space surveillance radar to WA. Plus there is a telescope to look at them as well (I thinks that's ours). It took three years to move it. See http://www.contactairlandandsea.com/2017/03/08/c-band-radar/
ReplyDeleteThanks David Candy
ReplyDeleteRe: "...the US has transplanted a space surveillance radar to WA. Plus there is a telescope to look at them as well (I thinks that's ours). It took three years to move it. See http://www.contactairlandandsea.com/2017/03/08/c-band-radar/ "
I think the "telescope" about which you speak is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Surveillance_Telescope [SST]
With https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Surveillance_Telescope#Location :
"The SST was initially deployed for testing and evaluation at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
On December 6, 2013, it was announced that the telescope system would be moved to the Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt in Exmouth, Western Australia, as part of the Australia-U.S. Space Situational Awareness Initiative.
From there it will able to observe the Southern Celestial Hemisphere and collect data for the US Space Surveillance Network.
The SST system was originally expected to be operational in 2016, but was not moved till 2017. As of 1 October 2017 satellite imagery of its site at 21.8957 S, 114.0899 E showed only partial completion of the installation .[15] Due to the new site being in a cyclone region, construction has been delayed.[16]"
Like Pine Gap, all for a good cause.
Cheers
Pete