The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) has expressed ”serious interest” in building two large-dish antennas in South Africa as part of its deep space array network (DSAN), Deputy Science and Technology Minister Derek Hanekom announced on Friday.
Briefing the media at Parliament, he said the areas being looked at are two sites near the Northern Cape towns of Springbok and Upington.
The DSAN is designed to enhance the capabilities of Nasa’s existing deep space network (DSN), an international network of antennas supporting interplanetary spacecraft missions, as well as radio and radar astronomy observations for the exploration of the solar system and the universe.
According to the website of the California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which manages and operates the network for Nasa, it also supports selected Earth-orbiting missions.
It is understood the DSAN, once completed, will increase the capabilities of the existing network by a factor of three.
Currently, the DSN consists of three deep-space communications facilities located about 120 degrees of longitude apart around the world. One is at Goldstone, in California’s Mojave Desert; another near Madrid, Spain; and a third near Canberra, Australia.
According to JPL, ”this strategic placement permits constant observation of spacecraft as the Earth rotates, and helps to make the DSN the largest and most sensitive scientific telecommunications system in the world”.
The Springbok and Upington sites being considered by Nasa lie on almost the same longitude as the existing Spanish facility.
Hanekom said Nasa would take a decision ”within the next couple of months”.
”We’ve had serious interest expressed in South Africa by Nasa for what they call their deep space array network. The competing country is Spain. The location for the DSAN would be Springbok and Upington in the Northern Cape. Of all the areas chosen, Springbok has an annual rainfall of less than 100mm a year.
”What Nasa actually wants is two sites that are close to each other, but with two different climatic zones, which is effectively what you have.
”Both sites have low rainfall, but of the two Springbok is wetter. [The facilities] need an absolute minimum number of days that are wasted due to rain or due to weather conditions.
”Between the two sites, that is what would be achieved,” he said.
It is understood DSAN operations are highly sensitive to rain and water vapour, making the hot and dry Northern Cape an ideal location for building such a facility.
According to JPL, the antennas and their data delivery systems make it possible, among other things, to acquire telemetry data from spacecraft; transmit commands to spacecraft; track spacecraft positions and velocities; perform very-long-baseline interferometry observations and measure variations in radio waves for radio science experiments. – Sapa