NASA to launch rockets from the Northern Territory

NASA has announced it’ll launch a trio of rockets from the Arnhem Space Centre in the Northern Territory, marking the first NASA launch from a commercial facility outside the United States.

It’ll be the first time rockets have been launched from Australian soil since 1995.

“They want to view things that are only available from Australia’s perspective out into space,” Dr Rebecca Allen, from the Centre for Astrophysics at Swinburne University of Technology, told Neil Mitchell.

Dr Allen says the rockets won’t be in outer space for long, unlike satellites in orbit for months or years.

“They’re not going to be launched up into orbit around Earth, but they’re just going to be going on a short ride up and then they’ll be coming down very quickly,” she said.

“These rockets are actually going to be performing science, so they have special instruments on them and they’re going to be telling us about the sun’s magnetic field, some stuff about the planets.”

Dr Allen says it’s a very exciting development for Australia.

“We are one step closer to providing access to space, not just for other countries but for ourselves,” she said.

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