Jonathan Barrett Reuters September 21, 2020
SYDNEY (Reuters) - China will lose access to a strategic space tracking station in Western Australia when its contract expires, the facility's owners said, a decision that cuts into Beijing's expanding space exploration and navigational capabilities in the Pacific region.
The Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) has had a contract allowing Beijing access to the satellite antenna at the ground station since at least 2011. It is located next to an SSC satellite station primarily used by the United States and its agencies, including NASA.
The Swedish state-owned company told Reuters it would not enter into any new contracts at the Australian site to support Chinese customers after its current contract expires. However, it did not disclose when the lease runs out.
China last used the Yatharagga Satellite Station, located about 350 km (250 miles) north of the Australian city of Perth, in June 2013 to support the three-person Shenzhou 10 mission which completed a series of space docking tests, SSC said.
The SSC said the current contract supports Chinese scientific space missions within its programme for manned-space flights for telemetry, tracking and command services.
Ground stations are a vital part of space programmes given they create a telecommunications link with spacecraft. While stations have different capabilities, they can be equipped to co-ordinate satellites for civil-military Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) such as Beidou, Russia's GLONASS, the European Union's Galileo system and U.S.-owned GPS.
China's space programme has been increasing its access to overseas ground stations in recent years in line with the expansion of its space exploration and navigational programmes.