The beginnings of radio astronomy in South Africa – The Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory was South Africa’s first radio astronomy observatory – SARAO Anniversary Report
The Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO) was South Africa’s first radio astronomy observatory. It is located in a valley in the Magaliesberg hills, 50 km north-west of Johannesburg in the province of Gauteng. It began as Deep Space Station 51 and was built in 1961 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States of America. An 85-foot (26- m) 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 spacecrafts, 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 wind.
In 1975, the station was handed over to the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), which converted it to a radio astronomy observatory. In 1988, the observatory became a national facility operated by the Foundation for Research Development (FRD), which became part of the NRF in 1999.
Initially, the function of HartRAO was purely research in radio astronomy, but in the 1980s a new application called Space Geodesy (geodesy using space techniques) was implemented at HartRAO.
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