Canberra is at the heart of space research - for NASA. They'd be lost without the CDSCC

The Canberra Deep Space Communication Centre - aka Tidbinbilla Tracking Station - just west of Canberra has started publishing their tracking schedule on their website.

And what an eye-opener it is.

We can see for instance that on Tuesday 6 March, DSS-43 the big 70-metre dish was talking to our favourite Mars Curiosity Rover, now about half way to Mars. Same day it was also be talking with Voyager 2 out on the very edge of our solar system, currently a whopping 13 hrs 38 mins 03 secs of light-travel time from Earth.


Meanwhile DSS-45 was tracking Dawn heading to an asteroid rendezvous and Grail's gravity mapping of the Moon, and DSS-34 was also tracking Grail as well as the Chandra X-ray space telescope. And that's just part of one day's work...

So if you've been thinking Canberra is all about politics, think again. Canberra is critical to the bulk of NASA's space program.