On this day, 26 February 1960, the Menzies Government enters into a partnership with the United States to build a series of specialised tracking stations to support NASA’s space program. These stations would prove crucial to the the Manned Space Flight Network (MSFN), the Deep Space Network (DSN) and the Satellite Tracking and Data Acquisition Network (STADAN), helping the United States to first catch up and then overtake the USSR in the Space Race. When man first walked on the moon, it was the tracking station at Honeysuckle Creek ACT and later the radio-telescope at Parkes NSW which relayed the pictures to a worldwide audience of 600 million people, and this technical capability was thanks to investments made by Menzies.

This started with the Parkes Observatory. During the late 1940s and early 1950s Australia had a highly successful Radiophysics program, which had grown out of research and development that had gone into the then secret technology of radar during World War Two. The CSIRO operated a number of radio telescope field stations in and around Sydney, and became a world-leader in conducting research into ‘cosmic noise’, radio waves emitted by the sun. However, when Britain’s Jodrell Bank Observatory announced that it was building a giant parabolic dish, fears arose that Australia’s scientific research would fall behind.

Consequently, scientists at the CSIRO began lobbying the responsible minister, Richard Casey, for resources to construct Australia’s own ‘dish’. Casey was enthusiastic, and took the idea to Menzies who agreed to fund the project if matching private donations could be found. This money was ultimately sourced from the United States, with generous philanthropic gifts secured from the Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations. The site at Parkes was chosen because of its mild climate, low average windspeed, and low radio interference, and the key construction contract went out to tender and was won by West German company Maschinenfabrik Augsburg Nurnberg. The telescope was thus a product of the combined efforts of the Cold War West.

The telescope was not initially intended to be utilised for NASA’s space program, and it was still under construction when Menzies entered into the 1960 agreement. Instead, the agreement was focused on the construction of a whole series of new tracking stations, which would eventually include sites at Woomera SA, Carnarvon WA, Toowoomba QLD, Muchea near Perth, and three stations built around the ACT. Australia contributed US$140,000 per annum to NASA’s billion-dollar budget in exchange for autonomous operation of NASA stations in Australia; the only nation to secure this privilege. Australia provided the land, the staff and built the facilities, while the US provided training, technical equipment and equipment installation support.

On 20 February 1962, less than two years after the agreement, the Muchea station would track astronaut John Glenn as he became the first American in space. Australian tracking stations would be essential to the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs of manned space flight, and they would also be essential to the deep space probes that NASA sent out to explore our solar system, starting with the Mariner Mars Program.

In 1965, while opening the Tidbinbilla deep space tracking station in the ACT, Menzies’s Minister for Supply Allen Fairhall lauded the mutual benefits that both Australia and the United States were receiving from the partnership:

‘This is another day of achievement for the U.S. national aeronautics and space administration in its great scientific attack on the mysteries of space and for Australia whose area of cooperation in the great adventure continues to expand… the programme goes with two-way benefits: to the united states in access to our geography peculiarly essential to their peaceful scientific endeavours in space and to Australia in access to the most advanced technology in space research and related activities’

The payoff of that technological access would be demonstrated on 29 November 1967, when Australia became just the fourth nation to build and launch a satellite from its territory into orbit. A WRESAT (Weapons Research Establishment Satellite) was launched from Woomera, entering into a highly elliptical retrograde orbit north westerly across Carnarvon, measuring solar radiation and the temperature and density of Earth’s upper atmosphere

As for the investment at Parkes, the radio-telescope would go on to be the ‘most successful scientific instrument ever built in Australia… unsurpassed in terms of the number of astronomers, both national and international, who have used the instrument, the number of research papers that have flowed from their research, and the sheer longevity of its operation (now over fifty years)’.

Australia has a great deal to be proud of in its involvement in the space race, but perhaps nothing more so than in the Parkes Observatory’s pivotal role in the Apollo 13 rescue mission. Initially, Parkes was not scheduled to be involved in the mission because, unlike with Apollo 11, at that time of year the moon was to be too far north in the sky to make it worthwhile. However, when disaster struck, the telescope’s immense power was crucial in keeping radio communications alive as the astronauts were forced to enter the lunar module, which had a very faint signal, to save oxygen and electricity. When NASA called for help, technicians from the Post Office, A.B.C. and Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd. worked through the night to install temporary circuits between Parkes and the ACT stations at Honeysuckle Creek and Tidbinbilla. Establishing the links involved erecting in darkness six aerials up to 60ft high, but the task was completed in remarkable time and life-saving communications were maintained, helping the three astronauts return to Earth safely.

Further Reading:

Andrew Tink, Honeysuckle Creek: Story of Tom Reid, a Little Dish and Neil Armstrong’s First Step (NewSouth Publishing, 2018).

Peter Robertson, ‘An Australian Icon – Planning and Construction of the Parkes Telescope’, Science with Parkes @ 50 Years Young, 31 Oct. – 4 Nov., 2011.

‘Nomination of NASA Space Tracking Station at Carnarvon for Engineering Heritage Recognition’, Engineers Australia, March 2012.

‘Weak signals from Apollo 13’, Sydney Morning Herald April 16, 1970, available at https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/from-the-archives-1970-weak-signals-from-apollo-13-20210326-p57ebc.html