US to launch rocket from outback port

Nasa was to launch a rocket from the remote wilderness of northern Australia yesterday evening, the first commercial space launch in Australia and the agency’s first from a commercial spaceport.

The suborbital rocket would be briefly visible seconds after the launch, scheduled for 10.44pm Australian Central Standard Time, and will travel 300 kilometres into space.

The dry Australian landscape and its closeness to the equator offer optimal conditions for space launches, said Australian National University astrophysicist Brad Tucker, who would be 400 metres from the launch pad at the Arnhem Space Centre.

“At 12 degrees in Arnhem you don’t get many places closer to the equator. Particularly you don’t get places close to the equator where you can get dry, stable air. Florida, where Cape Canaveral is, is kind of a swamp,” he said, referring to Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center.

The US space agency, formally the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa), has said three launches from Arnhem Space Centre in June and July will help it explore how a star’s light can influence a planet’s habitability.

Yesterday’s mission would carry detectors to measure X-rays produced by hot gases that fill the space between stars to help study how they influence the evolution of galaxies, Nasa said in a statement.

The second and third missions in July will observe Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to Earth, and the nearest to the Southern Cross constellation that features on the Australian flag, said Dr Tucker. The constellation and Alpha Centauri can only be seen in the Southern skies. “The big goal is to see if there is potentially Earth-like planets around it,” he said.