A Canadian space company will sink at least $10 million into a historic dish in coastal Western Australia that was once used for NASA missions.
ThothX has signed a 20-year renewable lease to operate and maintain the Overseas Telecommunications Commission dish 900 kilometres north of Perth in Carnarvon.
The dish will be repurposed for deep space radar tracking of satellites and spacecraft.
ThothX already operates the Algonquin Radio Observatory in Canada but has been searching for a site in Europe and Australia to expand its monitoring network.
The company uses deep space radar technology to track spacecraft in Earth's geostationary orbit, which is located at an altitude of about 35,000 kilometres, and beyond.
Satellites stationed that far out move at the same speed as the planet's daily rotation.
This means ThothX requires different facilities across the globe to be able to track satellites since, from a ground view, they remain in a fixed position.
Caroline Roberts, the chief executive of ThothX and its parent company, said it was important to be able to track where spacecraft were and other objects which might threaten them.
"Not only are these orbits used by some commercial spacecraft operators for communications, on which we all rely, but these are the orbits that the militaries," she said.
"So these are really critical orbits and it's essential to maintain custody of spacecraft in the high geo orbits, as well as other objects that might threaten those spacecraft.
"These spacecraft typically cost around $1 billion each. There are about 2,000 of them in geo (orbit), making that orbit ring worth around $2 trillion."
Millions of dollars needed to upgrade facility
The OTC dish in Carnarvon was decommissioned in 1987 after providing communications support to NASA on missions up until 1975.
An older tracking station on the same hill as the OTC dish was used as part of the communications relay during the first moon landing.
The Shire of Carnarvon has responsibility for the upkeep of the OTC dish but without a major source of revenue through the facility. It started looking for ways to cover an estimated $1.7 million repair bill.
Shire president Eddie Smith said the deal with ThothX meant the dish would go back into use and remain the landmark it was for the town.
"From the ocean heading to home or the roads, when you look up and see the dish, you know you're nearly home," he said.
"It wasn't earning any money, so it's hard with the limited funding we have. We'd had a structural assessment done on it, and we were going out to see if we could get some grants, but then ThothX came along and fixed the problem."
Dr Roberts said the dish needed a multi-milliondollar refurbishment and would have a new $10 million radar installed.
"First of all, we have to get rid of the pigeons. They've been nesting there for a while, and boy, they're messy too," she said.
"But we've already acquired some pigeon deterrent devices that we'll be affixing to the dish. We're going to spray wash the entire thing to get rid of their muck, then we're going to paint to the entire structure.
"It does need some welding in places. But overall, it's in pretty excellent shape, in fact."
ThothX hopes the dish will become operational by 2024.
Currently tourists are able to walk up a set of stairs to a deck on the dish, but it will become inaccessible with its new use.
The neighbouring Carnarvon Space Museum will also have to change the exit route from its grounds which loops around the dish.
The museum's curator and manager Phil Youd said there are more positives than negatives with the new dish lease.
"It's had little maintenance done to it, with this new contract with the Canadian people it's looking like it's going to be all fixed up, and maintained for the next 20 years," he said.
"It's great to see our icon is going to be living for another day."
