Two US – Australia Space Agreements Extended

The recent visit of the President of the United States of America Barack Obama to Australia saw two space agreements renewed, continuing the Australian / US cooperation in Space. NASA and the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science and Research (DIISR) have announced their intention to extend two bilateral space agreements that would otherwise expire in 2012.

The first, the Space Vehicle Tracking and Communications Facilities Agreement (1980), is for CSIRO to operate the Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex (CDSCC) – one of NASA’s three main global deep space communications facilities. The updated agreement will come into force on the 26th of February 2012, and is extended until Feb 26, 2014. The exchange of notes can be found here and here.

The second agreement is the Scientific Ballooning Agreement (2006) to allow NASA and Australian partners (CSIRO, UNSW etc) to develop civil payloads and technology for NASA high altitude balloon missions, building upon agreements on scientific ballooning agreements since 1984. The agreement also allows Australian scientists to be involved in the NASA ballooning campaigns, with each balloon campaign that NASA undertakes is estimated to contribute $5 Million to the Australian economy. The treaty exchange of notes can be found here, with the National Interest Analysis is here with the agreement to be renewed on the 12 June 2012 after expiry of the current agreement.

I note that both analysis highlight that NASA has spent ‘in excess of $740 million’ on space-related activities in Australia since 1960 – that’s a sizable sum of money!

Space Balloon crashes in the Australian Outback

Whilst it has been well reported across the internet, the recent NASA balloon launch carrying the University of California, Berkeley's Nuclear Compton Telescope (NCT) had a spectacular launch failure recently near Alice Springs. In fact, by the sounds of things, we are lucky not to be reporting the first Space related fatality in Australia.

The balloon broke free from its anchor cables after a freak gust of wind, sending the payload smashing into the ground, and overturning a 4WD in the process. Fortunately the payload just missed several spectators before crashing and almost completely destroying the ultra sensitive payload.

Here’s the raw ABC video from the launch.