William Atkins
Saturday, 27 February 2010 02:05
Science -
Space
Page 1 of 3
The Australian Space Research Program announced that it has launched four space-based programs involving Living Space Laboratories, Scramjets, Antarctic Broadband, and Space and Earth Technologies.
On Friday February 26, 2010, Senator Kim Carr, the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science, and Research, announced awards totaling A$12 million for the first four recipients within the Australian Space Research Program (
ASRP).
This announcement comes on the heels of the announcement by the United States and Australia of the building of three new high-tech antenna dishes at Australia’s Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex (Tidbinbilla Deep Space Tracking Station).
The iTWire article “
Australia continues teamwork with NASA” discusses the new dishes at Tidbinbilla. In essence, NASA’s aging fleet of 40-year-old, 70-meter-wide dishes are being replaced with new 34-meter-wide dishes at Canberra (Australia), Goldstone (California, U.S.), and Madrid (Spain).
These antennas will allow the deep space communications network to work on several different frequency bands for each individual antenna, along with higher-frequency, wider bandwidth signals called Ka band. The new high-tech dishes will also allow its associated electronic equipment to be easier and less costly to operate and maintain.
The Canberra dishes—with construction beginning on the fiftieth anniversary of U.S. and Australian cooperation in space tracking operations—are expected to be up and running by 2018.
Paralleling this important announcement at Canberra, is the awarding of A$12 million to the first four recipients of the new ASRP.
Page two continues with the specifics on the first four recipients of the ASRP.
