Starman tracked by Warkworth dish
SpaceX test launched its Falcon Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida last week, sending a cherry-red Tesla Roadster on a billion year space odyssey.
The launch is the first step as owner Elon Musk hopes to see a colony established on Mars.
As the Roadster’s orbit took it over this part of the world, the crew at the Warkworth Observatory received both flight data and video from the craft and relayed it to the SpaceX control centre near Cape Canaveral.
There the flight data was used to monitor the craft and the video live-streamed out to the world.
Observatory Director Professor Sergei Gulyaev and colleague Stuart Weston were thrilled as they watched the launch from the Warkworth Observatory.
‘‘I can’t believe it’s happening in my lifetime,’’ Gulyaev said.
‘‘I saw the last NASA space shuttle being put together and visited SpaceX’s factory in Los Angeles a couple of years ago, so to see this is a huge buzz,’’ Weston said.
The orbit took it through the harsh Van Allen Belt at times.
‘‘It’s going to get whacked pretty hard,’’ Musk told reporters before the launch.
The Belt is an area of high radiation surrounding the Earth, further out than the International Space Station and satellites, made up of particles streaming from the sun, getting caught in the Earth’s magnetic field.
‘‘I can't believe it's happening in my lifetime’’
Musk had intended the craft would move into a Trans-Mars injection orbit around the sun bringing it in the vicinity, when both Earth and Mars are closest, every two years or so.
These are the times when it would be the easiest and least energy-intensive to move people and goods between Earth and Mars orbits. But the Roadster is off course. Ironically, with progress on the mammoth BFR rocket designed to carry people and be part of an interplanetary transport system - Falcon Heavy rockets are now unlikely to be used on Mars, Musk advised.
Back at Warkworth, Gulyaev is pleased to be playing a small part as space history is made.
Western is pleased he left behind software and database upgrades at IBM, joining AUT’s Institute for Radio Astronomy and Space Research a decade ago, and fulfilling a boyhood dream to work in the space industry.