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Yeah, wish Australia would take a more active role in space exploration.

Some of the tracking stations for the project are in Australia, including the Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex. Perhaps it's a small contribution but Australia is definitely involved.

Yeah, I am more talking about putting up some real money towards these missions. We are a rich first world country, would love to see the American space budget cuts made up for more internationally, especially on the science based robotic missions and space telescopes.

I would imagine that a lot of the communications stuff has a lot to do with geography and would probably happen without Australian government funding.

According to some tweets I saw, the first images back came through Canberra.

Time for a sequel to 'The Dish'.

Australia has always been a backend operator. Similar for NASA other missions. It has provided the third contact point for when earth spins around which puts the other two contacts point out of reach.

They even did a movie about it: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205873/

Visited the Parkes telescope about 12mths after the movie launched, and can totally understand playing cricket on that surface. Ideal shape for playing cricket with only a batsman and a bowler.

Sorry had to drop a cricket reference here...

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