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| Workers pressure wash the logo of NASA on the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US, May 19, 2020. (File photo by= Reuters/Joe Skipper) |
[Asia News = Reporter Reakkana] SYDNEY: NASA will launch a rocket from the remote wilderness of northern Australia on Sunday evening (Jun 26), the first commercial space launch in Australia and the agency's first from a commercial spaceport, Reuters reported.
The suborbital rocket will be briefly visible seconds after the launch, scheduled for 10.44 pm Australian Central Standard Time, and will travel 300km into space. The dry Australian landscape and its closeness to the equator offer optimal conditions for space launches said Australian National University astrophysicist Brad Tucker, who will be 400m from the launch pad at the Arnhem Space Centre. "At 12 degrees in Arnhem you don't get many places closer to the equator. Particularly you don't get places close to the equator where you can get dry, stable air. Florida, where Cape Canaveral is, is kind of a swamp," he said, referring to NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
The US space agency, formally the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), has said three launches from Arnhem Space Centre in June and July will help it explore how a star's light can influence a planet's habitability. Sunday's mission will carry detectors to measure X-rays produced by hot gases that fill the space between stars to help study how they influence the evolution of galaxies, NASA said in a statement.
