| New Horizons Pluto mission: |
Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex to receive data from dwarf planet close encounter
A team of more than 92 Canberra space scientists, engineers, operators and communication specialists are anxiously awaiting the culmination of a nine-year voyage to the far edge of our solar system.
The New Horizons probe is roughly the size of a piano and is expected to make its closest encounter with Pluto on Tuesday night, bringing it within 12,500 kilometres of the icy dwarf planet.
The spacecraft is expected to make the close flyby past Pluto at 9:49:57pm (AEST) but it takes four hours for images taken at that time to be received on Earth due to the distance of 5.3 billion kilometres.
The Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex at Tidbinbilla in the ACT's west will be the first place on Earth to receive those first close encounter images captured and sent from space.
"Literally seeing things the size of a few suburban houses on the surface of Pluto, not that anybody expects to see a few suburban houses on the surface of Pluto!" Mr Nagle said.
NASA will live telecast the first full-frame close-up image of the Pluto encounter on its website in the hours after the flyby.
Mr Nagle likens the imminent close encounter with Pluto to the Apollo Mission's, Neil Armstrong's historic Moon walk and the recent Mars Curiosity Rover mission.
"New Horizons is another one of those moments," Mr Nagle said.
"You will remember where you were and what you were doing on that day when the whole world sees a brand new place in our solar system for the very first time."
"You will take a deep breath and go: 'Wow this is something that no human has ever seen before.'"
"A world that has been out there for 5 billion years.
"Waiting for human eyes to stare and ponder it's mysteries for decades and centuries to come."
It could take 18 months for all the data from New Horizons to be received on Earth.
The Tidbinbilla tracking station team have provided ongoing communication, tracking and navigation support to the Pluto mission since the launch of New Horizons in January 2006.
Five operators and 13 experts will be brought in on Tuesday night for what is described as a priority level one event.
The average tenure for senior antennae operators is 15 years and for juniors the tenure average is 10 years.
"So they have enormous experience and every key mission like this is rehearsed until it is down to a fine art," Mr Nagle said.
The director of the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, Dr Ed Kruzins, said Tidbinbilla has always played a vital role with NASA's network of sister stations in Spain and California.
"We played a key role early on as it came out of hibernation - sending some of the key commands," Dr Kruzins said.
"Since early this year we have been tracking it very carefully, navigating towards it, identifying exactly its position with respect to Pluto, sending commands to do fine tuning towards the encounter."
Dr Kruzins outlined the key technical processes involved during the final close approach of Pluto.
"It will fly past Pluto, point its cameras at the icy world, translate those images into one's and zero's - digital code, which it then transmits to us on Earth," he said.
"We receive that through our largest antennae, the largest in the southern hemisphere at 70 metres, it then records those one's and zero's and then sends them down a link to NASA where they then replay and reconstitute it into images, data, temperatures, pressures as it flies past.
"We are extremely proud that we as 92 Australians are playing this key part and [we feel] enormously privileged to have this opportunity."
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