It was a close call for critical Deep Space Network (DSN) antennas situated in Australia. Raging wildfires in approached NASA's invaluable set of DSN antennas in Canberra, with workers dowsing spot fires on the site.
The Australian complex is located 25 miles (40 kilometers) southwest of Canberra near the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. The Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex features four giant antennas including Deep Space Station 43 - a 230-foot (70-meter) steerable antenna - the largest in the Southern Hemisphere.
The Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex features a number of antennas that are required daily to receive from, and transmit information to a wide variety of spacecraft.
Destructive fires
At the DSN site, a visitor center was closed temporarily due to bushfires. Roads were closed in the area. While fires did affect the surrounding farmland, there has been no damage to the tracking station. The raging fires, however, damaged an outlying support structure - a tower, used to calibrate the antennas.
The public was requested not to enter the area, per advisories from police and emergency services.
Fires of this magnitude have never come so close to Canberra, Australias capital city.
Several people lost their lives and over hundreds of homes were destroyed, mostly in the southwestern suburbs. Australias famous Mount Stromlo Observatory, located immediately west of the city, was also incinerated by the fires - a nearly $12 million (U.S.) loss.
Interplanetary incommunicado
"A group of staff performed magnificently, successfully ensuring that no fires took hold at the site," said Peter Churchill, director of the Canberra antenna complex. "They also assisted the local fire service in their efforts to protect homes and farm infrastructure in the Tidbinbilla Valley," he said in a JPL statement.
For over three hours on Saturday, the Canberra dish antennas were inactive so workers could concentrate on the fire. During that stretch of time, the complex had been set to touch base with five spacecraft on interplanetary missions or in Earth orbit.
JPL spokesman, Guy Webster, told SPACE.com that the five spacecraft were: Chandra, the X-ray observatory; a Voyager spacecraft; the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO); POLAR, a satellite studying the dynamics of Earth's magnetosphere; and a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite.
None of the missed transmissions was critical or irreplaceable, said Joseph Wackley, DSN operations manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. JPL manages the DSN for NASA. The network's Canberra site is operated by British Aerospace, under contract to Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.
Weather watch
Thanks to backup electrical generators and water supplies at the site, radio dish operations can continue. The facility is sharing hot meals and water with area residents that have lost power and water because of the destructive fires.
Given the large expanses of drought-ridden land, coupled with still gusty winds, personnel at the DSN locale are watching conditions and are at the ready for additional fire duties.
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