On Sunday, we visited the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex. This is the one of NASA's ground stations for communicating with spacecraft and is particularly important since it is the only one in the southern hemisphere. The dishes here differ from the dish at Parkes in that they are specifically designed for this purpose and they are capable of transmitting messages to spacecraft as well as receiving them.
There was a very interesting visitor centre with lots of details on the workings of zero gravity toilets. Here are some pictures of enormous dishes:
To be fair, these dishes were actually a bit wimpy and small when compared to the one at Parkes, since they are only designed to receive signals from mere millions of miles away. As opposed to millions of lightyears.
3 comments:
Actually the big dish at Tidbinbilla is larger than the dish at Parkes. The Parkes Radio Telescope is 64metres in diameter and Deep Space Station 43 at Tidbinbilla is 70metres. It is also taller by some 20metres.
Tidbinbilla's dishes are also used for radio astronomy and have as great a range as Parkes and is often linked with their dish to create an even larger simulated antenna array.
Hey Glen, thanks for the post; I stand corrected :-). I would have loved it if the visitor center at Tidbinbilla had a bit more information about what was going on there (as well as the more generic space stuff). Along with Parkes it was a highlight of our more recent visit to Austrlia.
Wow! That guy sure knows about dishes!
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