astronomy

OTC Satellite Earth Station Carnarvon

OTC Satellite Earth Station Carnarvon is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand OTC Satellite Earth Station Carnarvon rather than just read about it. In short: 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 C…

Key takeaways

OTC Satellite Earth Station Carnarvon belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect OTC Satellite Earth Station Carnarvon to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of OTC Satellite Earth Station Carnarvon from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

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.

Television and NASA-assist operations The "sugar scoop" antenna became operational on 29 October 1966 when Intelsat-2A, the first of the three satellites launched, gave OTC and the Australian Broadcasting Commission a brief chance to test satellite television communications as the satellite drifted to failure over the Indian Ocean. On 24 November 1966, test patterns for the first live telecasts from Australia to England were successful. The next day, a live BBC television broadcast from a studio in London featured interviews linking UK families with their British migrant relatives standing in Robinson Street, Carnarvon. The "sugar scoop" became famous again on 21 July 1969, the day of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, relaying Neil Armstrong's first steps on the Moon from NASA's Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station, Canberra, to Perth's TV audience via Moree earth station – the first live telecast into Western Australia. The OTC station's eight years of communications support for the Carnarvon Tracking Station began on 4 February 1967, three weeks after Intelsat-2B was launched. A larger parabolic antenna was commissioned in late 1969 to upgrade the support for the later Apollo missions. OTC continued to provide communications support for NASA space programs until the NASA station closed early in 1975. Thereafter it tracked some NASA missions on its own account.

Contract tracking operations During OTC's last years of operation in Carnarvon, multiple tracking contracts were completed including:

Decommissioning The station was decommissioned in April 1987, but the site is still actively involved in solar scientific research, hosting a node of the Birmingham Solar Oscillations Network. In 2022 the OTC antenna was acquired by ThothX Australia, who are recommissioning it and refurbishing it into a deep space radar to provide space situational awareness on resident space objects in geostationary orbit. The new radar will extend Thothx's existing radar coverage over the Americas to the Indo-Pacific region. "OTC Satellite Earth Station Carnarvon (fmr)" is a registered heritage site with the Heritage Council of Western Australia. It has local, national and international cultural-heritage significance. The Carnarvon Space and Technology Museum opened in 2012.

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with OTC Satellite Earth Station Carnarvon

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what OTC Satellite Earth Station Carnarvon claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to OTC Satellite Earth Station Carnarvon before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about OTC Satellite Earth Station Carnarvon ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of OTC Satellite Earth Station Carnarvon

In research: OTC Satellite Earth Station Carnarvon appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses OTC Satellite Earth Station Carnarvon in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: OTC Satellite Earth Station Carnarvon is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1966 establishments in Australia, 1975 disestablishments in Australia, Carnarvon, Western Australia, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for OTC Satellite Earth Station Carnarvon outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study OTC Satellite Earth Station Carnarvon in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what OTC Satellite Earth Station Carnarvon means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain OTC Satellite Earth Station Carnarvon out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is OTC Satellite Earth Station Carnarvon in simple terms?

Why does OTC Satellite Earth Station Carnarvon matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study OTC Satellite Earth Station Carnarvon?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on OTC Satellite Earth Station Carnarvon.