By Simon Driver, University of Western Australia Posted February 13, 2017 08:48:08 Any nation that hopes to have a space program needs to be able to keep an eye on its orbiting assets at all times. This means that Australia has become a key link in the global chain of ground-based tracking stations. The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has a deep space tracking facility at Tidbinbilla in the ACT, managed by the CSIRO, and the European Space Agency (ESA) has one in New Norcia, Western Australia. The New Norcia station plays a further role as it picks up and tracks the ESA launches from French Guiana as they curve across the Indian Ocean on their way to Earth orbit or beyond. This means that Australia plays a critical role in many other countries’ space programs. Right now, about 40 space missions — including deep space planetary explorers, Mars rovers, solar observatories and astronomical space observatories — are routinely downlinking their data through radio dishes on Australian soil. This uniquely acquired data is then piped out of the country to the eagerly waiting US and European scientific communities, bypassing our own. If Australia is to capitalise on its strengths in space tracking as well as space science, and is to get on board with the burgeoning commercial space industry, it’s time that we considered forming a space agency of our own. A space agency serves several roles. First and foremost is the creation of coherence across a complex…more detail
