News & Stories

Tracking SpaceX and NASA missions

As the only university to operate a continental array of radio telescopes, the University of Tasmania plays a key role in the global space industry.

The University is providing high-precision positioning data and telemetry support for a range of space missions, including the SpaceX missions to resupply the International Space Station.

The collaboration is the University’s latest contribution to the global space industry. Over the past two decades its researchers have worked with many space agencies including NASA, the European Space Agency, and the China National Space Administration.

The University operates a continent-wide collection of radio telescopes, called the AuScope VLBI Array. It is the only university in the world with this capability. The scale is important because the accuracy of astronomical measurements is determined by the combined size of the observing instruments.

Three widely spaced dishes (in Hobart, in Katherine in the Northern Territory, and in Yarragadee in Western Australia) facilitate a technique known as Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), which is critically important to spacecraft navigation and control. It allows the simultaneous calculation of a craft’s position relative to both Earth and space, thus allowing orbit and direction to be accurately calculated. Conversely it also enhances the accuracy of GPS and of satellite mapping of the Earth’s surface.

The data gathered is fed to the International VLBI Service (IVS), the organisation responsible for integrating all VLBI data from around the world.

In 2014, the astrophysics and geospatial data gathered by the University resulted in a 30 per cent improvement in measurements for the southern hemisphere. The following year, IVS instructed its global network of 34 contributing observatories to copy the University’s protocols.

By then, the University was already working closely with SpaceX. In an agreement struck in 2012, researchers committed to provide the company with tracking and downlink services for numerous missions, including resupply journeys to the International Space Station.

Its first major mission came the same year, when the 12-metre telescope in its Mount Pleasant Observatory, near the Hobart suburb of Cambridge, was used to monitor the launch, docking, and return of Dragon, the first crewless commercial space vehicle ever to travel to the space station.

The observatory received video and telemetry information from the orbiting craft and forwarded it to SpaceX’s California control centre.

Also:

  • The University is partnering with the IVS to design sensitive, low-maintenance broadband receiver systems.
  • The University has delivered telemetry and telecommunications for several successful space missions, including the ESA’s Mars Express (2013–14), China’s Chang’e 3 (2014), and Russia’s RadioAstron (2014 to present).
  • PhD students who have received hands-on observing experience at the University’s facilities are going on to win jobs with NASA and other international agencies.

Interested in conducting your own research? Apply now to become a research student.

Interested in partnering with the University of Tasmania? Find out more here.