MAN: (OVER RADIO) First day at space...
JOE: The universe holds many secrets,
a lot of which are still to be discovered...
Three, two, one... (BEEPING)
..but some of the most important things we do know about it
were discovered right here in Australia, thanks to this.
This is the Parkes Radio Telescope,
or The Dish, as it's come to be known.
It's located here, in New South Wales,
and this year marks 60 years of space research service.
In the late 1940s and early '50s,
radio astronomy, which is the study of radio waves from outer space,
was taking off.
Astronomers wanted to know more
about the things in our galaxy and beyond,
so the UK built an enormous radio telescope
and, not wanting to be left behind,
physicist Dr Edward George Bowen from the CSIRO said,
"Hey, we need one of those in Australia too."
So began years of design and construction
and by October 31, 1961,
The Dish was ready to go.
And when it was built, it was the second largest
but most advanced radio telescope in the world.
The Parkes Telescope is essentially just a glorified radio antenna,
but whenever you say 'telescope',
the first thing everybody imagines is something that you look through.
But with our telescope, we detect the radio emissions,
the extremely weak, very feeble radio emissions from the stars.
And by studying those radio emissions,
scientists are able to learn way more about stars
than by just looking at them.
It's helped discover lots of things
like pulsars, which are compact stars the size of a city
but more dense than our sun,
the Magellanic Stream, which is a huge cloud of gas
arching over our Milky Way
and hundreds of whole new galaxies containing billions of stars,
just to name a few.
Also, closer to home, you know,
the telescope is a near ideal instrument
for tracking spacecraft in deep space.
And one of the telescope's most famous moments was doing just that.
When the Apollo 11 mission
touched down on the surface of the Moon in 1969...
MAN: (OVER RADIO) The Eagle has landed.
..the Parkes Telescope was responsible
for receiving the signal from the lunar module
and sharing it with 600 million people across the globe.
NEIL ARMSTRONG: It's one small step for man...
..one giant leap for mankind.
MICHAEL COLLINS: How is the quality of the TV?
CAPSULE COMMUNICATOR: Oh, it's beautiful, Mike.
The reason the Parkes Telescope was given this huge responsibility
was not only because of its size or sensitivity,
but because of its location.
It was built in the middle of a paddock,
far away from any other radio signals
that could have interfered with the transmission.
It's just as useful today, although sometimes it picks up things
that are a little harder to explain.
Back in 2015, mysterious signals it picked up
got people speculating about alien life.
There are occasions when we detect signals
that don't appear to be of natural origin.
But it turned out to just be someone using a microwave
in the staff kitchen.
Oh.
Aliens or not, The Dish has come a long way
from where it all began 60 years ago.
And so the combined upgrades over the years have meant
that the telescope today is over 10,000 times more sensitive
than when it was built.
And the upgrades are getting put to good use straightaway.
NASA say that from next year it'll use the telescope
to help with its Artemis program
that will eventually send humans back to the Moon.
It's the premier scientific instrument in Australia's history,
still doing world-class science, still making great discoveries
and something that I think
all Australians should be rightly proud of.