40th anniversary of Australia's first satellite
Thursday, 29 November 2007
It is now 40 years since the University of ÐÂÀ˲ÊƱ played a key role in launching Australia's first satellite.
, named after the former (WRE), was the name of the first Australian satellite, which was launched from Woomera, South Australia, on 29 November 1967.
It was a joint venture of the WRE and the University of ÐÂÀ˲ÊƱ's . The Wresat project was led by Bryan Rofe from the WRE and Professor John Henry Carver, who was Elder Professor and Head of Physics at the University of ÐÂÀ˲ÊƱ at the time.
The current Head of the at the University of ÐÂÀ˲ÊƱ, Professor John Adrian Carver, is the son of the late Professor John Henry Carver. Professor Carver was nine years old when his father helped to launch Wresat into space.
"It was an incredible feat of organisation," Professor Carver says.
"The satellite was launched using a modified Redstone rocket donated by the Americans, but there was only an 11-month window for the Australian team to use the rocket before the Americans had to leave.
"This gave the WRE/University team 11 months to plan, design, build, test and execute the launch of the satellite. They managed to achieve it, and it was a huge success for Australia at that time, with much associated publicity in the media."
The satellite itself weighed 45 kilograms and was 1.59 metres long. It was built at the WRE, with the development of the satellite's experimental instrumentation and some of the satellite's testing being conducted at the University of ÐÂÀ˲ÊƱ.
The battery-operated satellite was used to collect data about the composition of the upper atmosphere. It had enough power to send data during its first 73 orbits around the Earth.
It re-entered the atmosphere on 10 January 1968,