European Space Agency launches second house antenna in New Norcia, north of Perth

A brand new deep house antenna opened in a tiny monastic city in Western Australia might assist unlock the secrets and techniques of the universe.

The European Space Agency (ESA) on Saturday formally opened its fourth deep house antenna globally, at New Norcia, about 120 kilometres north of Perth.

Dubbed New Norcia 3 (NNO-3), it is the second antenna on the web site, which is Australia’s solely city centred round a monastery.

The 40-metre-tall, 700-tonne piece of infrastructure was constructed to maintain up with rising information obtain calls for from spacecraft exploring the photo voltaic system.

“[There are] billions of stars and galaxies we are observing and that creates huge amounts of data and that’s why we need a large antenna to get the weak signal from these telescopes from far away,” ESA director normal Josef Aschbacher mentioned.

Dr Aschbacher mentioned the antenna would assist missions exploring Mars, Jupiter, the Sun and asteroids, and different unknown components of the universe.

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“All the stars that we see, the sun and all the planets, that makes only 5 per cent of the universe,” he mentioned.

“Ninety-five per cent we don’t see, we don’t measure, and that’s why we have designed this one mission called Euclid, which looks into dark energy and dark matter.”

Precise know-how

Exploring components of the photo voltaic system which might be a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of kilometres away requires superior and exact know-how.

CSIRO’s Suzy Jackson manages ESA’s New Norcia station and mentioned the brand new antenna might — in concept — obtain a cellphone name from Mars.

“Signals coming from a spacecraft in deep space, by the time they get to us, they’re incredibly faint, and when we talk back to a spacecraft, by the time our signals get to the spacecraft, it’s also incredibly faint,” she mentioned.

“So we do two things. Firstly, we yell really loud, then we listen really, really carefully.

“We use huge {hardware}, a really large dish to catch as a lot of the sign as we probably can, after which now we have cryogenic amplifiers which might be cooled to minus 260 levels Celsius, in order that they do not contribute noise to the sign.”

Mapping the universe

ESA’s head of ground station engineering Mehran Sarkarati said data received by the NNO-3 will include high resolution images, maps of the universe and scientific data from observations of planets such as Venus and Mars.

“We additionally ship instructions to our spacecraft to inform the spacecraft what to do,” Dr Sarkarati mentioned.

“Which scientific measurements to take, what space of this universe to map, all that’s communicated to our spacecraft utilizing these antennas that now we have.”

The antenna will also help other space agencies around the world who may need to use it to communicate with their spacecraft.

“We cooperate with NASA, we do the identical with India, Japan, and some others who’ve requested us for assist of those providers from these antennas,” Dr Sarkarati mentioned.

“So it is also a device for worldwide cooperation, which we additionally foster rather a lot throughout the European Space Agency.”

Life on Jupiter?

Australian Space Agency astronaut Katherine Bennell-Pegg is over the moon about the possibilities this antenna brings to the future of space exploration.

“One of my favorite missions that is going to be related to by way of this centre right here in Western Australia is known as JUICE. It’s going discover the icy moons of Jupiter, essentially the most distinguished candidates for potential life in our photo voltaic system,” Ms Bennell-Pegg mentioned.

“Another mission goes out to discover asteroids and to know how they might influence Earth and the way to ensure we are able to deflect them, if they appear to be on that path.”

Ms Bennell-Pegg said the antenna is at the forefront of exciting innovations in space technology.

“Should I be fortunate sufficient to go to the moon? Well, you by no means know, I’d have the ability to have some nice video calls with the info pipes by way of Australia, with the science information pipes from Australia, chatting with Australian operators,” she mentioned.

“It’s very thrilling, regardless of the future could also be.”

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