NASA's top officials are in Canberra to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the space administration's Deep Space Network.
The Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex (CDSCC) at Tidbinbilla is one of three sites worldwide that facilitate the communication between NASA and its craft, satellites and astronauts across the solar system.
Over the past 50 years, the network has coordinated and controlled hundreds of manned and un-manned ventures into space including the first manned mission to the moon in 1969, the first fly-by of Neptune in the 1980s, and the Curiosity Mars Rover mission in 2012.
The Tidbinbilla facility, hidden among the hills near Canberra, has three giant antennas- one 70 metre-wide dish and two that are 32 metres wide - that help to coordinate the dozens of NASA missions running at any one time.
CDSCC director Dr Ed Kruzins says the Canberra site has contributed strongly to NASA's missions.
"The DSN (Deep Space Network) ensures that the critical science obtained by robotic spacecraft in extreme environments at incredible distances makes it back home to Earth," he said.
"We are tremendously proud of our ongoing contribution to NASA's exploration of space and of the job done by our predecessors."
The site is run by the CSIRO on behalf of NASA.
Dr David Williams leads information science research at CSIRO and in the past has run both the United Kingdom Space Agency and the European Space Agency.
He says the facility is a crucial part of the Deep Space Network.
"In terms of the science that the community through NASA is trying to achieve, Tidbinbilla is really an essential component," he said.
"It's certainly the most important in the southern hemisphere, and without it the NASA missions could not succeed. I think it's as simple as that."
The three complexes that make up the Deep Space Network are situated at disparate corners of the globe to facilitate contact with craft and satellites anywhere above Earth.
The other two sites are in Madrid, Spain and Goldstone, California.
50th anniversary of deep space exploration at Tidbinbilla
Today's celebration also marks 50 years of operations at the Tidbinbilla site.
The site, neighbouring farmland and national forest, was chosen because there is minimal radio frequency interference from nearby towns and properties.
The Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex began operating in 1964 and its official opening ceremony in 1965 was attended by then-prime minister Robert Menzies and NASA's associate administrator Edmond C Buckley.
Although the site is coordinated and funded by NASA - costing the US agency a total of $800 million over the past 50 years - the CSIRO currently runs the complex with 92 staff.
Two more antennas are currently under construction and are due to be completed in the next six to seven years at a cost of $110 million.
They will receive the first images from Pluto sent back by the New Horizons spacecraft in 2015.
The upgrade is part of wider improvements to the Deep Space Network that will allow much faster transmission of data between Earth and spacecraft.
NASA hopes the upgrades will one day allow rovers to stream high definition video from Mars back to Earth.
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