Internet
The Internet is the global system of interconnected computer networks that use the Internet protocol suite to link devices worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of private, academic and government networks of local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic and optical networking technologies; the Internet carries a vast range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web, electronic mail and file sharing. Some publications no longer capitalize "internet"; the origins of the Internet date back to research commissioned by the federal government of the United States in the 1960s to build robust, fault-tolerant communication with computer networks. The primary precursor network, the ARPANET served as a backbone for interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the 1980s; the funding of the National Science Foundation Network as a new backbone in the 1980s, as well as private funding for other commercial extensions, led to worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies, the merger of many networks.
The linking of commercial networks and enterprises by the early 1990s marked the beginning of the transition to the modern Internet, generated a sustained exponential growth as generations of institutional and mobile computers were connected to the network. Although the Internet was used by academia since the 1980s, commercialization incorporated its services and technologies into every aspect of modern life. Most traditional communication media, including telephony, television, paper mail and newspapers are reshaped, redefined, or bypassed by the Internet, giving birth to new services such as email, Internet telephony, Internet television, online music, digital newspapers, video streaming websites. Newspaper and other print publishing are adapting to website technology, or are reshaped into blogging, web feeds and online news aggregators; the Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of personal interactions through instant messaging, Internet forums, social networking. Online shopping has grown exponentially both for major retailers and small businesses and entrepreneurs, as it enables firms to extend their "brick and mortar" presence to serve a larger market or sell goods and services online.
Business-to-business and financial services on the Internet affect supply chains across entire industries. The Internet has no single centralized governance in either technological implementation or policies for access and usage; the overreaching definitions of the two principal name spaces in the Internet, the Internet Protocol address space and the Domain Name System, are directed by a maintainer organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. The technical underpinning and standardization of the core protocols is an activity of the Internet Engineering Task Force, a non-profit organization of loosely affiliated international participants that anyone may associate with by contributing technical expertise. In November 2006, the Internet was included on USA Today's list of New Seven Wonders; when the term Internet is used to refer to the specific global system of interconnected Internet Protocol networks, the word is a proper noun that should be written with an initial capital letter.
In common use and the media, it is erroneously not capitalized, viz. the internet. Some guides specify that the word should be capitalized when used as a noun, but not capitalized when used as an adjective; the Internet is often referred to as the Net, as a short form of network. As early as 1849, the word internetted was used uncapitalized as an adjective, meaning interconnected or interwoven; the designers of early computer networks used internet both as a noun and as a verb in shorthand form of internetwork or internetworking, meaning interconnecting computer networks. The terms Internet and World Wide Web are used interchangeably in everyday speech. However, the World Wide Web or the Web is only one of a large number of Internet services; the Web is a collection of interconnected documents and other web resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs. As another point of comparison, Hypertext Transfer Protocol, or HTTP, is the language used on the Web for information transfer, yet it is just one of many languages or protocols that can be used for communication on the Internet.
The term Interweb is a portmanteau of Internet and World Wide Web used sarcastically to parody a technically unsavvy user. Research into packet switching, one of the fundamental Internet technologies, started in the early 1960s in the work of Paul Baran and Donald Davies. Packet-switched networks such as the NPL network, ARPANET, the Merit Network, CYCLADES, Telenet were developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s; the ARPANET project led to the development of protocols for internetworking, by which multiple separate networks could be joined into a network of networks. ARPANET development began with two network nodes which were interconnected between the Network Measurement Center at the University of California, Los Angeles Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science directed by Leonard Kleinrock, the NLS system at SRI International by Douglas Engelbart in Menlo Park, California, on 29 October 1969; the third site was the Culler-Fried Interactive Mathematics Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, followed by the University of
Broadcasting
Broadcasting is the distribution of audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic mass communications medium, but one using the electromagnetic spectrum, in a one-to-many model. Broadcasting began with AM radio, which came into popular use around 1920 with the spread of vacuum tube radio transmitters and receivers. Before this, all forms of electronic communication were one-to-one, with the message intended for a single recipient; the term broadcasting evolved from its use as the agricultural method of sowing seeds in a field by casting them broadly about. It was adopted for describing the widespread distribution of information by printed materials or by telegraph. Examples applying it to "one-to-many" radio transmissions of an individual station to multiple listeners appeared as early as 1898. Over the air broadcasting is associated with radio and television, though in recent years, both radio and television transmissions have begun to be distributed by cable; the receiving parties may include the general public or a small subset.
The field of broadcasting includes both government-managed services such as public radio, community radio and public television, private commercial radio and commercial television. The U. S. Code of Federal Regulations, title 47, part 97 defines "broadcasting" as "transmissions intended for reception by the general public, either direct or relayed". Private or two-way telecommunications transmissions do not qualify under this definition. For example and citizens band radio operators are not allowed to broadcast; as defined, "transmitting" and "broadcasting" are not the same. Transmission of radio and television programs from a radio or television station to home receivers by radio waves is referred to as "over the air" or terrestrial broadcasting and in most countries requires a broadcasting license. Transmissions using a wire or cable, like cable television, are considered broadcasts but do not require a license. In the 2000s, transmissions of television and radio programs via streaming digital technology have been referred to as broadcasting as well.
The earliest broadcasting consisted of sending telegraph signals over the airwaves, using Morse code, a system developed in the 1830s by Samuel F. B. Morse, physicist Joseph Henry and Alfred Vail, they developed an electrical telegraph system which sent pulses of electric current along wires which controlled an electromagnet, located at the receiving end of the telegraph system. A code was needed to transmit natural language using only these pulses, the silence between them. Morse therefore developed the forerunner to modern International Morse code; this was important for ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore communication, but it became important for business and general news reporting, as an arena for personal communication by radio amateurs. Audio broadcasting began experimentally in the first decade of the 20th century. By the early 1920s radio broadcasting became a household medium, at first on the AM band and on FM. Television broadcasting started experimentally in the 1920s and became widespread after World War II, using VHF and UHF spectrum.
Satellite broadcasting was initiated in the 1960s and moved into general industry usage in the 1970s, with DBS emerging in the 1980s. All broadcasting was composed of analog signals using analog transmission techniques but in the 2000s, broadcasters have switched to digital signals using digital transmission. In general usage, broadcasting most refers to the transmission of information and entertainment programming from various sources to the general public. Analog audio vs. HD Radio Analog television vs. Digital television WirelessThe world's technological capacity to receive information through one-way broadcast networks more than quadrupled during the two decades from 1986 to 2007, from 432 exabytes of information, to 1.9 zettabytes. This is the information equivalent of 55 newspapers per person per day in 1986, 175 newspapers per person per day by 2007. There have been several methods used for broadcasting electronic media audio and video to the general public: Telephone broadcasting: the earliest form of electronic broadcasting.
Telephone broadcasting began with the advent of Théâtrophone systems, which were telephone-based distribution systems allowing subscribers to listen to live opera and theatre performances over telephone lines, created by French inventor Clément Ader in 1881. Telephone broadcasting grew to include telephone newspaper services for news and entertainment programming which were introduced in the 1890s located in large European cities; these telephone-based subscription services were the first examples of electrical/electronic broadcasting and offered a wide variety of programming. Radio broadcasting. Radio stations can be linked in radio networks to broadcast common radio programs, either in broadcast syndication, simulcast or subchannels. Television broadcasting, experimentally from 1925, commercially from t
Spacecraft
A spacecraft is a vehicle or machine designed to fly in outer space. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, earth observation, navigation, space colonization, planetary exploration, transportation of humans and cargo. All spacecraft except single-stage-to-orbit vehicles cannot get into space on their own, require a launch vehicle. On a sub-orbital spaceflight, a space vehicle enters space and returns to the surface, without having gained sufficient energy or velocity to make a full orbit of the Earth. For orbital spaceflights, spacecraft enter closed orbits around the Earth or around other celestial bodies. Spacecraft used for human spaceflight carry people on board as crew or passengers from start or on orbit only, whereas those used for robotic space missions operate either autonomously or telerobotically. Robotic spacecraft used to support scientific research are space probes. Robotic spacecraft that remain in orbit around a planetary body are artificial satellites.
To date, only a handful of interstellar probes, such as Pioneer 10 and 11, Voyager 1 and 2, New Horizons, are on trajectories that leave the Solar System. Orbital spacecraft may be recoverable or not. Most are not. Recoverable spacecraft may be subdivided by method of reentry to Earth into non-winged space capsules and winged spaceplanes. Humanity has achieved space flight but only a few nations have the technology for orbital launches: Russia, the United States, the member states of the European Space Agency, China, Taiwan (National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology, Taiwan National Space Organization, Israel and North Korea. A German V-2 became the first spacecraft when it reached an altitude of 189 km in June 1944 in Peenemünde, Germany. Sputnik 1 was the first artificial satellite, it was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957. The launch ushered in new political, military and scientific developments. Apart from its value as a technological first, Sputnik 1 helped to identify the upper atmospheric layer's density, through measuring the satellite's orbital changes.
It provided data on radio-signal distribution in the ionosphere. Pressurized nitrogen in the satellite's false body provided the first opportunity for meteoroid detection. Sputnik 1 was launched during the International Geophysical Year from Site No.1/5, at the 5th Tyuratam range, in Kazakh SSR. The satellite travelled at 29,000 kilometers per hour, taking 96.2 minutes to complete an orbit, emitted radio signals at 20.005 and 40.002 MHz While Sputnik 1 was the first spacecraft to orbit the Earth, other man-made objects had reached an altitude of 100 km, the height required by the international organization Fédération Aéronautique Internationale to count as a spaceflight. This altitude is called the Kármán line. In particular, in the 1940s there were several test launches of the V-2 rocket, some of which reached altitudes well over 100 km; as of 2016, only three nations have flown crewed spacecraft: USSR/Russia, USA, China. The first crewed spacecraft was Vostok 1, which carried Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space in 1961, completed a full Earth orbit.
There were five other crewed missions. The second crewed spacecraft was named Freedom 7, it performed a sub-orbital spaceflight in 1961 carrying American astronaut Alan Shepard to an altitude of just over 187 kilometers. There were five other crewed missions using Mercury spacecraft. Other Soviet crewed spacecraft include the Voskhod, flown uncrewed as Zond/L1, L3, TKS, the Salyut and Mir crewed space stations. Other American crewed spacecraft include the Gemini spacecraft, Apollo spacecraft, the Skylab space station, the Space Shuttle with undetached European Spacelab and private US Spacehab space stations-modules. China developed, but did not fly Shuguang, is using Shenzhou. Except for the Space Shuttle, all of the recoverable crewed orbital spacecraft were space capsules. Crewed space capsules The International Space Station, crewed since November 2000, is a joint venture between Russia, the United States and several other countries; some reusable vehicles have been designed only for crewed spaceflight, these are called spaceplanes.
The first example of such was the North American X-15 spaceplane, which conducted two crewed flights which reached an altitude of over 100 km in the 1960s. The first reusable spacecraft, the X-15, was air-launched on a suborbital trajectory on July 19, 1963; the first reusable orbital spacecraft, a winged non-capsule, the Space Shuttle, was launched by the USA on the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight, on April 12, 1981. During the Shuttle era, six orbiters were built, all of which have flown in the atmosphere and five of which have flown in space. Enterprise was used only for approach and landing tests, launching from the back of a Boeing 747 SCA and gliding to deadstick landings at Edwards AFB, California; the first Space Shuttle to fly into space was Columbia, followed by Challenger, Discovery and Endeavour. Endeavour was built to replace Challenger when it was lost in January 1986. Columbia broke up during reentry in February 2003; the first automatic reusable spacecraft was the Buran-class shuttle, launched by the USSR on November 15, 1988, although it made only one flight and this was uncrewed.
This spaceplane was designed for a crew and resembled the U
Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station
Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station is a large radiocommunication site located on Goonhilly Downs near Helston on the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall, England. Owned by Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd under a 999-year lease from BT Group plc, it was at one time the largest satellite earth station in the world, with more than 25 communications dishes in use and over 60 in total; the site links into undersea cable lines. Its first dish, Antenna One, was built in 1962 to link with Telstar, it is 25.9 metres in diameter and weighs 1,118 tonnes. After Pleumeur-Bodou Ground Station which received the first live transatlantic television broadcasts from the United States via the Telstar satellite at 0H47 GMT on 11 July 1962, Arthur received his first video in the middle of the same day, it is therefore protected. The site has played a key role in communications events such as the Muhammad Ali fights, the Olympic Games, the Apollo 11 Moon landing, 1985's Live Aid concert; the site's largest dish, dubbed "Merlin", has a diameter of 32 metres.
Other dishes include Guinevere and Isolde after characters in Arthurian legend, much of which takes place in Cornwall. The earth station is powered by the National Grid. If power fails, all essential equipment will run off huge batteries for up to 20 minutes, during which time four one-megawatt diesel generators will take over; the nearby wind generator farm is not part of the complex. On 12 September 2006, BT announced it would shut down satellite operations at Goonhilly in 2008, move them to Madley Communications Centre in Herefordshire, making that centre BT's only earth station; until Easter 2010 the site had a visitor centre inside which the Connected Earth gallery told the history of satellite communications. There were a cafe, a shop and one of Britain's fastest cybercafés. There were tours around the main BT site and into the heart of Arthur. At its prime, the site attracted around 80,000 visitors a year, but in March 2010 BT announced that the visitor centre would be "Closed for Easter and beyond, until further notice."
On 11 January 2011 it was announced that part of the site was to be sold to create a space science centre. This would involve upgrading some of the dishes to make them suitable for "deep space communication with spacecraft missions". A new company was formed to manage Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd.. The company leased most of the antennas for at least three years with the option to buy the entire complex in the future. Goonhilly Earth Station Limited took ownership of the site in January 2014. There are plans to connect one or more of the Goonhilly dishes into global radio astronomy interferometer networks. There are plans to upgrade the former visitor centre into "an outreach centre promoting space and space science for visitors, including local residents and schools". In July 2015 European Space Agency has begun a 9-month feasibility study to examine if antenna Goonhilly 6 could be used to support Exploration Mission 1 of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle; the site is a partner in the bid by Newquay Airport to become the UK's first Spaceport.
In April 2018, Goonhilly became part of a collaboration partnership for Commercial Lunar Mission Support Services, with the European Space Agency and Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. The agreement calls for the upgrade of Goonhilly, development of a lunar pathfinder mission. Plans exist for small landers with a lunar mothership providing communications relay. Official website
Boise, Idaho
Boise is the capital and most populous city of the U. S. state of Idaho, is the county seat of Ada County. Located on the Boise River in southwestern Idaho, the population of Boise at the 2010 Census was 205,671, the 99th largest in the United States, its estimated population in 2016 was 223,154. The Boise-Nampa metropolitan area known as the Treasure Valley, includes five counties with a combined population of 709,845, the most populous metropolitan area in Idaho, it contains. Boise is the 80th most populous metropolitan statistical area in the United States. Accounts differ regarding the name's origin. One account credits Capt. B. L. E. Bonneville of the U. S. Army as its source. After trekking for weeks through dry and rough terrain, his exploration party reached an overlook with a view of the Boise River Valley; the place where they stood is called Bonneville Point, located on the Oregon Trail east of the city. According to the story, a French-speaking guide, overwhelmed by the sight of the verdant river, yelled "Les bois!
Les bois!" —and the name stuck. The name may instead derive from earlier mountain men. In the 1820s, French Canadian fur trappers set trap lines in the vicinity. Set in a high-desert area, the tree-lined valley of the Boise River became a distinct landmark, an oasis dominated by cottonwood trees, they called this "La rivière boisée", which means "the wooded river." The area was called Boise long before the establishment of Fort Boise by the federal government. The original Fort Boise was 40 miles west, near Parma, down the Boise River near its confluence with the Snake River at the Oregon border; this private sector defense was erected by the Hudson's Bay Company in the 1830s. It was abandoned in the 1850s, but massacres along the Oregon Trail prompted the U. S. Army to re-establish a fort in the area in 1863 during the U. S. Civil War; the new location was selected because it was near the intersection of the Oregon Trail with a major road connecting the Boise Basin and the Owyhee mining areas, both of which were booming.
During the mid-1860s, Idaho City was the largest city in the Northwest, as a staging area, Fort Boise grew rapidly. The first capital of the Idaho Territory was Lewiston in north central Idaho, which in 1863 was the largest community, exceeding the populations of Olympia and Seattle, Washington Territory and Portland, Oregon combined; the original territory was larger than Texas. But following the creation of Montana Territory, Boise was made the territorial capital of a much reduced Idaho in a controversial decision which overturned a district court ruling by a one-vote majority in the territorial supreme court along geographic lines in 1866. Designed by Alfred B. Mullett, the U. S. Assay Office at 210 Main Street was built in 1871 and today is a National Historic Landmark. Most native and longtime residents use the pronunciation / ˈbɔɪsiː /; the pronunciation is sometimes used as a shibboleth, as outsiders tend to pronounce the city's name as /ˈbɔɪziː/. Boise is in southwestern Idaho, about 41 miles east of the Oregon border, 110 miles north of the Nevada border.
The downtown area's elevation is 2,704 feet above sea level. Most of the metropolitan area lies on a flat plain, descending to the west. Mountains rise to the northeast, stretching from the far southeastern tip of the Boise city limits to nearby Eagle; these mountains are known to locals as the Boise foothills and are sometimes described as the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. About 34 miles southwest of Boise, about 26 miles southwest of Nampa, the Owyhee Mountains lie in neighboring Owyhee County. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of 80.05 square miles, of which, 79.36 square miles is land and 0.69 square miles is water. The city is drained by the Boise River; the City of Boise is considered part of the Treasure Valley. Boise occupies a large area — 64 sq mi according to the United States Census Bureau. Like all major cities, it has several neighborhoods, including the Bench, the North End, West Boise and Downtown. In January 2014, the Boise Police Department partnered with the folksonomic neighborhood blogging site Nextdoor, the first city in the Northwest and the 137th city in the U.
S. to do so. Since the app, which enables the city's police and parks departments to post to self-selected localized areas, first became available in October 2011, 101 neighborhoods and sections of neighborhoods have joined. Downtown Boise is Boise's cultural home to many small businesses and a few mid-rises. While downtown Boise lacks a major retail/dining focus like Seattle and Portland, the area has a variety of shops and growing option for dining choices. Centrally, 8th Street contains a pedestrian zone with sidewalk restaurants; the neighborhood has many local restaurants and boutiques and supports a vibrant nightlife. The area contains the Basque Block, which gives visitors a chance to learn about and enjoy Boise's Basque heritage. Downtown Boise's main attractions include the Idaho State Capitol, the classic Egyptian Theatre on the corner of Capitol Boulevard and Main Street, the Boise Art Museum on Capitol in front of Julia Davis Park, Zoo Boise on the grounds of Julia Davis Park. Boise's economy was threatened in the late 1990s by commercial development at locations away from the downtown center, such as Boise Towne Square Mall and at shopping centers near new housing developments.
Cultural events in Dow
General Services Administration
The General Services Administration, an independent agency of the United States government, was established in 1949 to help manage and support the basic functioning of federal agencies. GSA supplies products and communications for U. S. government offices, provides transportation and office space to federal employees, develops government-wide cost-minimizing policies and other management tasks. GSA employs about 12,000 federal workers and has an annual operating budget of $20.9 billion. GSA oversees $66 billion of procurement annually, it contributes to the management of about $500 billion in U. S. federal property, divided chiefly among 8,700 owned and leased buildings and a 215,000 vehicle motor pool. Among the real estate assets managed by GSA are the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D. C. – the largest U. S. federal building after the Pentagon – and the Hart-Dole-Inouye Federal Center. GSA's business lines include the Federal Acquisition Service and the Public Buildings Service, as well as several Staff Offices including the Office of Government-wide Policy, the Office of Small Business Utilization, the Office of Mission Assurance.
As part of FAS, GSA's Technology Transformation Services helps federal agencies improve delivery of information and services to the public. Key initiatives include FedRAMP, Cloud.gov, the USAGov platform, Data.gov, Performance.gov, Challenge.gov. GSA is a member of the Procurement G6, an informal group leading the use of framework agreements and e-procurement instruments in public procurement. In 1947 President Harry Truman asked former President Herbert Hoover to lead what became known as the Hoover Commission to make recommendations to reorganize the operations of the federal government. One of the recommendations of the commission was the establishment of an "Office of the General Services." This proposed office would combine the responsibilities of the following organizations: U. S. Treasury Department's Bureau of Federal Supply U. S. Treasury Department's Office of Contract Settlement National Archives Establishment All functions of the Federal Works Agency, including the Public Buildings Administration and the Public Roads Administration War Assets AdministrationGSA became an independent agency on July 1, 1949, after the passage of the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act.
General Jess Larson, Administrator of the War Assets Administration, was named GSA's first Administrator. The first job awaiting Administrator Larson and the newly formed GSA was a complete renovation of the White House; the structure had fallen into such a state of disrepair by 1949 that one inspector of the time said the historic structure was standing "purely from habit." Larson explained the nature of the total renovation in depth by saying, "In order to make the White House structurally sound, it was necessary to dismantle, I mean dismantle, everything from the White House except the four walls, which were constructed of stone. Everything, except the four walls without a roof, was stripped down, that's where the work started." GSA worked with President Truman and First Lady Bess Truman to ensure that the new agency's first major project would be a success. GSA completed the renovation in 1952. In 1986 GSA headquarters, U. S. General Services Administration Building, located at Eighteenth and F Streets, NW, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, at the time serving as Interior Department offices.
In 1960 GSA created the Federal Telecommunications System, a government-wide intercity telephone system. In 1962 the Ad Hoc Committee on Federal Office Space created a new building program to address obsolete office buildings in Washington, D. C. resulting in the construction of many of the offices that now line Independence Avenue. In 1970 the Nixon administration created the Consumer Product Information Coordinating Center, now part of USAGov. In 1974 the Federal Buildings Fund was initiated, allowing GSA to issue rent bills to federal agencies. In 1972 GSA established the Automated Data and Telecommunications Service, which became the Office of Information Resources Management. In 1973 GSA created the Office of Federal Management Policy. GSA's Office of Acquisition Policy centralized procurement policy in 1978. GSA was responsible for emergency preparedness and stockpiling strategic materials to be used in wartime until these functions were transferred to the newly-created Federal Emergency Management Agency in 1979.
In 1984 GSA introduced the federal government to the use of charge cards, known as the GMA SmartPay system. The National Archives and Records Administration was spun off into an independent agency in 1985; the same year, GSA began to provide governmentwide policy oversight and guidance for federal real property management as a result of an Executive Order signed by President Ronald Reagan. In 2003 the Federal Protective Service was moved to the Department of Homeland Security. In 2005 GSA reorganized to merge the Federal Supply Service and Federal Technology Service business lines into the Federal Acquisition Service. On April 3, 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Martha N. Johnson to serve as GSA Administrator. After a nine-month delay, the United States Senate confirmed her nomination on February 4, 2010. On April 2, 2012, Johnson resigned in the wake of a management-deficiency report that detailed improper payments for a 2010 "Western Regions" training conference put on by the Public Buildings Service in Las Vegas.
In July 1991 GSA contractors began the excavation of what is now the Ted Weiss Federal Building in New York City. The planning for that buildin
Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex
The Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex is an Earth station in Australia located at Tidbinbilla in the Australian Capital Territory. Opened in 1965, the complex was used for tracking the Apollo Lunar Module, it is part of the Deep Space Network of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, managed in Australia by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. The complex is located in the Paddys River valley, about 20 km from Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory; the complex is part of the Deep Space Network run by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It is referred to as the Tidbinbilla Deep Space Tracking Station and was opened on 19 March 1965 by Prime Minister of Australia Sir Robert Menzies; the station is separated from Canberra by the Murrumbidgee River and, more the Coolamon Ridge, Urambi Hills, Bullen Range, which help shield the dishes from the city's radio frequency noise. Located nearby is the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve; the CSIRO manages most of NASA's activities in Australia.
In February 2010 CSIRO took over direct management of the site with the establishment of CASS. Previous to this CDSCC had been managed by external sub-contractor organisations, such as Raytheon Australia from 2003-2010. During the mid 1960s NASA built three tracking stations in the Australian Capital Territory; the Tidbinbilla Tracking Station was opened in 1965 and is the only NASA tracking station in Australia still in operation. During the Apollo program, Tidbinbilla was used for tracking the Apollo Lunar Module; the Orroral Valley Tracking Station was opened in May 1965 in what is now part of Namadgi National Park. Its role was orbiting satellite support, although it supported the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975, it was closed in 1985. Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station opened in 1967 and was built to support the Apollo Moon missions communications with the Apollo Command Module. After the cancellation of the Apollo Project the station supported Skylab until its re-entry in 1979 when the station joined the Deep Space Network in support of the Viking and Voyager projects.
1981 saw the closure of the station and its 26 m antenna was moved to CDSCC to become known as Deep Space Station 46. After the antenna was removed the rest of the facility was dismantled and knocked down, its foundation, access road and parking area are all. As of late 2016 the Station has five large antennas in use: DSS-34, DSS-35, DSS36, DSS-43, DSS-45; the CDSCC uses the Parkes radio telescope in central New South Wales at busy times to receive data from spacecraft. There has been ongoing construction since 2010 building additional 34 m beam waveguide antenna. Construction of DSS-35 began in July 2010; the station's collimation tower is located 3 km to the north-west, on Black Hill. CDSCC costs about A$20 million per year to run, is funded by NASA. Carnarvon Tracking Station OTC Satellite Earth Station Carnarvon Parkes Observatory Partners in space: CSIRO and NASA - video Official CDSCC Webpage Official CSIRO pages Tidbinbilla Tracking Station tribute site Honeysuckle Creek tribute site
