Carnarvon is a coastal town situated approximately 900 kilometres (560 mi) north of Perth, in Western Australia. It lies at the mouth of the Gascoyne River on the Indian Ocean. The popular Shark Bay world heritage area lies to the south of the town and the Ningaloo Reef and the popular tourist town of Exmouth lie to the north. Mungullah Aboriginal Community was formerly in the town however it has moved east of the town.

The OTC Satellite Earth Station Carnarvon, an Earth station in Australia, was established to meet the need for more reliable and higher quality communications for the Apollo program. NASA contracted Australia's Overseas Telecommunications Commission (OTC) "to provide an earth station near Carnarvon, Western Australia to link the NASA tracking station in that area to the control centre in the USA", also contracting COMSAT to launch three Intelsat-2 communications satellites.