ESA antenna to aid solar system exploration
The European Space Agency (ESA) is to construct a 35-metre deep space antenna in Australia to prepare for future solar system exploration. The New Norcia ground station, which should be ready for handover to the ESA in July 2002, lies just north of Perth on Australia's western coast. The antenna will help to gather and analyse information from exploratory voyages such as the Rosetta mission, due for launch in early 2003. The goal of the Rosetta mission, adopted by the ESA as a cornerstone mission in 1993, will be to rendezvous with comet Wirtanen and study its nucleus and environment. The new ground station will also be used to support ESA's SMART-1 moon orbiter, scheduled for launch in November 2002, and the Mars Express orbiter and Beagle 2 lander, which will follow Rosetta in the summer of 2003. Rosetta is due to be launched in January 2003 from an Ariane-5 launcher in Kourou, French Guiana. The final rendezvous manoeuvre with comet Wirtanen is expected to take place in November 2011. Rosetta operations will be carried out by the ESA Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany. The New Norcia dish will be used to send commands to the Rosetta spacecraft during its eight year journey to the comet Wirtanen and to receive the avalanche of data sent back from Rosetta as it flies past the Earth and Mars, traverses the asteroid belt and swings into orbit around comet Wirtanen. The journey will take eight years and cover 900 million kilometres. Once Rosetta is in orbit around comet Wirtanen, a lander will be sent down to the surface. Data collected by instruments on the lander will be transmitted at low power - little more than the power of a typical light bulb - to the New Norcia ground station. These receivers will amplify the signal and pass it on for further processing. It is hoped that the Rosetta mission will reveal information about the origin of comets and the solar system itself. The New Norcia ground station will join a network of other ESA ground stations in Kiruna (Sweden), Redu (Belgium), Villafranca (Spain), Maspalomas, Canary Islands (Spain), Perth (Australia) and Kourou (French Guiana).