About HartRAO

The SARAO Hartebeesthoek site is located west of Johannesburg, South Africa.

History

The Observatory began as Deep Space Station 51, built in 1961 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States of America. An 85 foot = 26 metre diameter antenna was used to get data from, and send commands to, many unmanned US space probes going beyond Earth orbit. These included the Ranger, Surveyor and Lunar Orbiter spacecraft which landed on the Moon or mapped it from orbit, the Mariner missions which explored the planets Venus and Mars and the Pioneers which measured the Sun’s winds.

The station was handed over to the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in 1975 and was converted to a radio astronomy observatory. In 1988 the observatory became a National Facility operated by the Foundation for Research Development (FRD). In 1999 the FRD was restructured as the National Research Foundation (NRF).

The original function of the observatory post-NASA was purely research in radio astronomy, but a new science developed at the SARAO Hartebeesthoek site from the 1980’s, namely Space Geodesy, i.e. geodesy using space techniques. The radio telescopes are used for both astronomy and space geodesy, and we have other dedicated space geodesy instrumentation.

SARAO operates:

26m radio telescope for astronomy and geodesy
15m radio telescope for astronomy and geodesy
Satellite Laser Ranger (SLR) for geodesy
Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers for GPS, GLONASS and Galileo, at HartRAO and at other locations, for geodesy

Location

The SARAO Hartebeesthoek site is located in a valley in the Magaliesberg hills, 50 km north-west of Johannesburg, in the province of Gauteng, South Africa.