Australian Space Tracking Stations

When I first began collecting stamps back in the late sixties ‘space’ was one of the ‘in’ topics.  It was the time of the ‘space race’ when people all around the world followed avidly the achievements of the Russian and United States space projects, each nation trying to outdo the other in space technology.

I joined The Australian Commonwealth Collectors Club of New South Wales in 1969 and noticed in the July 1969 ACCC Bulletin Vol.8 #9 an article, “Australian Space Tracking Stations and Philately”  by Frank D. Lower.  The article listed the tracking stations in operation in Australia at the time. In a separate paragraph it added the statement that the author thought many, if not all the tracking station administrations, would apply an ‘official’ rubber stamp cachet or printed label to covers for collectors and post them, if possible, on the day the particular station was engaged in a space project.

At the time my two eldest children were in primary school and very interested in the Apollo flights, which were receiving newspaper coverage at the time. As they were both collecting stamps, I decided to write to the tracking stations for covers – the result being that while the children were initially interested in receiving the material, eagerly watching the letterbox, it was mother that eventually made ‘space’ one of her main collecting interests.

In 1960, Australia entered into an initial 10-year agreement with the United States to support the expanding programme of the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA).  The U.S. agreed to meet the costs of the envisaged program, but Australia contributed $140,000 a year, which was the cost of local support at the time.

After the Explorer and Vanguard projects, Australia provided support for NASA’s manned Mercury space flight.  A tracking station was established at Muchea, near Perth, in 1960 and Woomera radar at Red Lake (SA), was adapted for the purpose in the same year. Both stations supported NASA’s first manned orbital flights by astronaut John Glenn in 1962 and the subsequent Mercury flights. About the same time NASA started preparing for a programme of Deep Space exploration, which resulted in the establishment of a station at Island Lagoon, near Woomera, specially designed for very long-range communication.

Island Lagoon
The first facility at Island Lagoon was the Minitrack system. It was moved there from Woomera Range G in about 1961. Soon after, Australia’s first Deep Space Station (DSS 41), the first deep-space station to be established outside the United States, was completed.  The site was located in a natural depression near the Island Lagoon dry lake bed, about 56 kilometres south of the range head of the Woomera Rocket Range. The facility employed more than 100 professional, technical and administrative staff who lived at Woomera township.

The tracking station participated in various projects involving spacecraft venturing more than 16,000 kilometres from Earth, including the first successful mission to another planet – the flyby of Venus by Mariner 2 during December 1962. It also played a key role in the Ranger and Lunar Orbiter missions to the Moon.

The station ceased operations on 22 December 1972, as part of a consolidation of NASA station facilities. After the Australian Department of Supply determined that the cost of transporting the antenna to a new, more accessible location for radio astronomers would be prohibitive, the antenna was dismantled and sold for scrap in 1973. Illustrated in Figure 1 (above) is an Island Lagoon cover for the Apollo 13 mission 11-17 July 1970, ironically postmarked during the troubled flight on 13 July.

Carnarvon
Officially opened in 1964, the Carnarvon station was built as part of the worldwide network of space tracking stations. It was the second of five established in Australia dedicated to manned space flights and scientific experiments.  The station was built for the Gemini programme after the conclusion of the successful Mercury flights and replaced the Muchea Tracking Station (Project Mercury)  near Perth.

The site was selected after extensive investigation into localities in both Western Australia and the Northern Territory and proved to be the most suitable location for both the Gemini and Apollo programmes.  In both programmes the orbital paths of the spacecraft were nearer to the equator than was the case with Project Mercury. At its height, about 180 professional, technical and administrative people were involved in the day to day operational and maintenance services at the Carnarvon Tracking Station.   The station was closed after Apollo 17, in 1973. The cover shown in Figure 2 (above) is cancelled at Carnarvon on 7 December 1972, the launch date of Apollo 17, the last manned flight to the moon.

Tidbinbilla
The driving force for the hurried establishment of the Tidbinbilla Station was the need for additional support for NASA’s rapidly expanding deep space programme.  In particular NASA needed support from our longitude for the first probe to Mars, Mariner 4 in late 1964, while still supporting the Ranger lunar exploration project from the Island Lagoon station at Woomera.

The Tidbinbilla Deep Space Communication DSS 42 complex was opened in late 1964 in the countryside south west of Canberra. Digital systems for transmission of data, which are common today, were relatively new in 1964, but digital systems were used by the first spacecraft supported by Tidbinbilla. The cover illustrated in Figure 3 (below) marks the Apollo 12 mission, 11 – 24 November 1969.

A significant development for Tidbinbilla was the completion of a 64-metre diameter antenna in 1973. Information from CSIRO’s 64-metre radio telescope at Parkes was used in the design of the NASA instrument and this is evident from the family resemblance between the two antennas. This big dish was designated DSS 43 and dwarfs all other elements of the complex. The station has been updated continually with new equipment to improve the data gathering capability and to automate many of the operations.

Orroral Valley
The Orroral Valley site for a tracking station to support earth orbiting satellites, as part of NASA’s Spacecraft Tracking and Data Acquisition Network  (STADAN),  was selected in late 1963 south of Canberra. Construction work was completed in May 1965 and the station was formally opened on 24 February 1966. The main requirement of this station, as distinct from the long-range communication task of Tidbinbilla, was to be able to switch quickly from supporting one satellite to another, often with quite different characteristics. The station supported the early tests of the reusable Space Shuttle which undertook its first orbital flight in 1981. The station was closed in 1984. Shown in Figure 4 (below) is a cover marking the Apollo 17 mission, 7-19 December 1972.

Honeysuckle Creek
The station construction was completed in December 1966 at a site south west of Canberra and was dedicated by Prime Minister Holt on 17 March 1967. Honeysuckle Creek became formally known as Deep Space Station 44 when it was transferred to the Deep Space Network in 1973.   It supported Skylab in 1973-74 and Apollo-Soyuz in 1975. In 1975 Honeysuckle Creek was modified to be a standard Deep Space Network station, using some of the equipment originally from Island Lagoon DSS 41. The station remained in configuration supporting various Deep Space Missions until its closure in 1981. The antenna was eventually dismantled and re-assembled at Tidbinbilla as DSS 46 and it has been supporting near-earth Missions (including Shuttle) since mid 1984 (in lieu of Orroral Valley). Shown in Figure 5 is a cover from the Apollo 17 mission mentioned above. Unfortunately, one of the cachets has partially obscured the Canberra slogan cancel.

Parkes
The A.N.A.R.O telescope was used for past NASA missions – notably for reception of Apollo 11’s T.V. pictures of the first moon landing, and the emergency contact after the accident on Apollo 13. The station also applied a coloured cachet for the other Apollo flights.  Illustrated in Figure 6 (below) is the circular cachet for Apollo 15, 26 July – 7 August 1971.

Changes in technology and tracking requirements over the years have seen the closure of all but the Tidbinbilla complex, although a mobile laser tracking facility is presently located in Yarragadee, Western Australia.

The Tidbinbilla complex, as part of NASA’S Deep Space Network (DSN), complements the tracking stations in Goldstone, California, and Madrid, Spain. Together the stations maintain constant monitoring of the various spacecraft. Each set of receiving ‘dishes’ takes over from the previous station as the Earth rotates. Today Tidbinbilla is used for all-important phases of planetary encounters and shuttle/space station missions. Information from all of the DSN stations is sent, by landline and satellites links, to the headquarters of the network, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

I visited the sites of Island Lagoon and Carnarvon back in 1997 when on a tour of Central and Western Australia. The site of Island Lagoon was completely bare with no sign of its once being a vital cog in deep space exploration. Some foundations existed at the Carnarvon site and part of the instrument panels have been installed in the Carnarvon Tourist Bureau, that had information leaflets and books on the history of the station for sale at that point in time.  The cacheted covers shown here are part of the history of Australia’s involvement with the pioneer period of manned space travel incorporating Gemini, Apollo and Skylab missions from 1960-1975. All the covers shown are acceptable for inclusion in a F.I.P. Astrophilatelic exhibit.

Reference articles included:  
Space Tracking Stations by R.A. Leslie Bee;  Canberra Deep Space Communication complex correspondence; information leaflets collected on visits to the Tidbinbilla complex in the year 2000; We Reach the Moon by John Noble Wilford and published by the New York Times in 1969.