During April to June 1971, the Joburg STADAN was rated the top performing tracking station in the NASA network with an operational efficiency of 99.94%.
fired to place the ATS-5 into a geostationary orbit, the satellite went into an unplanned flat spin.
to report on the physical condition of the orbiting pigtail monkey and could do so in real-time.
FOREIGN VISITORS, MODIFICATIONS AND A TOP RANKING
After a brief recovery and spinning about the correct axis, the satellite started spinning in the wrong direction and the gravity gradient booms could not be deployed.
By the turn of the decade leading into the 1970s, the successful recruitment of staff at the RSRS ensured that, for the first time in many years, all posts were filled at the Joburg STADAN. A year earlier NASA had capped the number of staff at the station at 131. Despite increasingly heavy workloads, the station had sufficient capacity for its 24-hour operations.
The start of the second decade of space exploration brought with it foreign visitors, major modifications to align the station with the latest STADAN standards, overseas training for staff and a French connection – all geared toward ensuring that, despite a 10% increase in its workload and an increasingly heavy tracking schedule, the Joburg STADAN would retain its reputation for efficiency and reliability.
The team at the Joburg STADAN transmitted critical wideband data from the satellite successfully, via an experimental communications satellite, to the GSFC Control Centre in Maryland. Despite continued rescue attempts, the ATS-5 could not be recovered and was retired in March 1984 after nine of the thirteen experiments on board had returned useful data.
CAPABILITIES INCREASED AND CAPACITY STABILISED In 1969, the new undersea cable via Ascension Island greatly improved terrestrial communications at Hartebeesthoek. Reliable communications circuits increased efficiency at the Joburg STADAN and enabled high-speed data transfer to the GSFC Control Centre. This proved particularly valuable during the Bios-D32 mission when the station had
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Technical staff at the RSRS, including some from the Joburg STADAN when the workload allowed, continued their training visits to the US under the NASA/CSIR exchange programme agreement, while NASA technicians spent time at Hartebeesthoek. The local technician training courses also continued, despite a concern that many students were reluctant to serve their two years at the station after graduating. Reasons given for this included higher pay in industry and a perceived under-utilisation of their newly gained knowledge and skills in the work at the station. The costs of the training programme, previously borne by NASA alone, became a shared expense between NASA and the CSIR.
1960-1975 The NASA years | The SAC Story: Commemorating 50 years
The visitors included representatives from NASA and GSFC to discuss contracts, budgets and operations. Several members of staff went to the US for threemonth training courses and the French space agency negotiated a contract with the CSIR to take over their satellite tracking operations at Paardefontein near Pretoria.
The French connection The French Space Agency, CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spaciales), had established a satellite tracking station at Paardefontein north of Pretoria in the 1960s and contracted a French company, Sodeteg (Société d’Etudes Techniques et d’Entreprises Générales) to manage the station.