SA to host Deep Space Ground Station

THE Cabinet has had more than just lockdown regulations on the agenda.

At a virtual meeting this week, a decision was taken to host a Deep Space Ground Station in the country.

The decision allows the SA National Space Agency (Sansa) to enter into a partnership with Nasa to host the station in Matjiesfontein in the Western Cape.

Managed by Sansa, the station will be integrated into an existing network of three sites in California in the US, Madrid in Spain and Canberra in Australia, and will support human space flight missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond.

South Africa will benefit in skills, research and growth of science, engineering, technology and innovation sector.

According to Nasa, the Deep Space Network (DSN) supports Nasa and non-Nasa missions that explore the furthest points of our solar system.

The large DSN antennas – which can be the height of a 20-storey building – capture faint signals sent from millions, even billions, of kilometres away.

The ground stations ensure that any satellite in deep space is able to communicate with at least one station at all times. The ground stations communicate with satellites to initiate course corrections, provide software updates, and alter the way scientific observations are made, according to Nasa’s website.

The project adds to the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project, an international effort to build the world’s largest radio telescope that will, eventually, have more than a square kilometre of collecting area.

The SKA is co-hosted by South Africa’s Karoo region and Western Australia’s Murchison Shire and brings together the world’s finest scientists, engineers and policy-makers.