Phone

+61 8 6488 1135

Email

isc@uwa.edu.au

Space Situational Awareness

The Zadko Telescope team
The Zadko Observatory, or the ISC's Space Situational Awareness team, supports the operation of a suite of space surveillance detectors and maximises research and development via joint projects. The Observatory itself is hosted at the Gingin Gravity Precinct,  on the Swan Coastal Plain, 80km north of Perth and UWA’s campus. Established in 1998 with support of the Western Australian Government, the 4.7-hectare site is surrounded by natural woodland with high species diversity. The Observatory is home to the 1.0 metre f/4 fast-slew Zadko Telescope, the only metre-class research grade optical facility at this southern latitude.
Research
 
The Zadko Observatory forms part of the UWA Space Surveillance Hub, dedicated to tracking and characterising both natural and artificial space objects. The Zadko Telescope is situated uniquely and strategically between the east coast of Australia and South Africa, which allows rapid imaging of optical transients at a longitude not monitored by other similar facilities.
 
Space Debris
 
The Zadko Telescope is used for tracking and mapping Space Debris which consist of all man-made objects, including their fragments or parts, other than active space vehicles larger than 10 microns and orbiting the Earth in outer space. The site is the base for the space domain awareness node of the International Space Centre
Zadko Telescope
Zadko Telescope
Planetary Defence
 
As a member of the Southern Hemisphere Asteroid Research Consortium (SHARC), the Zadko Observatory team is contributing to the Australian southern hemisphere bistatic radar and optical program, to detect near-Earth asteroids and objects (NEO’s) exhibiting an Earth orbit crossing nature. These Apollo and Aten class asteroids represent a form of deep space debris of a potentially hazardous nature to Earth.
  • UWA’s Space surveillance team are members of the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN) as part of a global Space Defence project coordinated by NASA.

Other space tracking facilities include:
 
  • The Falcon Telescope is a joint initiative between the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) and the University of Western Australia (UWA). The Falcon Telescope Network is a global network of small aperture (20 inch) telescopes developed by the Centre for Space Situational Awareness Research (CSSAR) in the Department of Physics at the U.S. Air Force Academy, in collaboration with educational partners. The Falcon Telescope will be shared with U.S. and international university partners for the purpose of undergraduate space situational awareness (SSA) and astronomy research education as well as community STEM outreach.

  • To compliment the Zadko Telescope the Australian Space Academy (ASA) have installed within the Zadko Observatory a Celestron 14” (C-14) telescope which will be dedicated to the near-Earth space environment, with particular emphasis on Space Situational Awareness (SSA) and planetary defence.

Partnerships with other space agencies:
 

  • The Zadko Observatory hosts an autonomous, remotely operated, alt-azimuth mounted PlaneWave Instruments CDK500 Telescope aligned with an ASA-300 optical instrument used for Space Situational Awareness (SSA) contracted to the Polish Space agency (POLSA).

  • The Zadko Observatory hosts an autonomous, remotely operated wide field of view optical telescope used for Space Domain Awareness (SDA) campaigns of Low Earth Orbit objects for the Space Debris team at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

  • The European Space Agency (ESA) is a user of the Zadko Telescope for planetary defence.

  • The UWA Space Surveillance Hub hosts multiple commercial space domain awareness companies including French based Ariane Group SAS, USA based company Slingshot and Japanese company Star Signal Solutions and is rapidly becoming a world recognised site for hosting space tracking equipment.

 
 

For further information and opportunities for collaborative projects

please contact Associate Professor David Coward, via email at: david.coward@uwa.edu.au

 

 

Associate Professor David Coward

Director

John Moore

Operations Manager

Dr Fiona Panther

Forrest Fellow

John Kennewell

Director - Australian Space Academy

Arie Verveer

Instrumentation

Dorota Mieczkowska

PhD Candidate

Evan Dilley

Observatory Systems Technical Officer

Lucas Contera

Masters Student

Oscar Lin

Masters Student

Isabella Scullard

Student