Space science advancements at the University of Tasmania

We present an overview of the University of Tasmania’s (UTAS) progress in monitoring and providing ground support for space projects. With five radio telescopes distributed across Australia, UTAS has a good capacity to study a wide range of scientific phenomena in our Solar System and to improve the outcome of space missions. High-cadence Mars Express spacecraft observations in the X-band (8.4 GHz) were monitored between 2014 and 2022 using the European Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) network and UTAS radio telescopes to study interplanetary plasma scintillation and characterise solar wind parameters. The quantification of the plasma’s effect on the radio signal helps in phase referencing for ultra-precise spacecraft tracking. The international collaboration with the China National Space Administration (CNSA) also allowed simultaneous coherent tracking of the interplanetary plasma scintillation for the incoming radio signals of the Mars Express and Tianwen-1 spacecraft.

Space weather monitoring has been carried out to study events such as coronal mass ejections using radio signals transmitted by the Solar Orbiter and Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft. The unique radio telescope infrastructure at UTAS will be essential in providing ground support to the Planetary Radio Interferometry and Doppler Experiment (PRIDE) led by the Joint Institute for VLBI ERIC (JIVE). The PRIDE experiment has been chosen by the European Space Agency (ESA) for the JUpiter ICy Moons Explorer mission (JUICE) that will explore three of Jupiter’s moons: Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. This space mission is scheduled to launch in April 2023.

In addition, University of Tasmania has been conducting observations with NASA and JPL for bi-static radar tracking experiments to detect and monitor Near-Earth Asteroids. Over 14 observations have been conducting with UTAS radio telescopes since the beginning of 2021.