So we are here with Glen Negle at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex. So Glen, thanks for joining us. Pleasure. Now, what is this thing? What is the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex? Our station is a part of this big network around the world, the Deep Space Network. And basically our job every day is send commands to spacecraft, tell them where to go, what to do, what not to crash into, unless we want to crash into it. And one information to collect for us and then send back home. So the thing is being that communication system providing that 24 hour coverage so that every picture, every bit of data, everything you've ever seen, heard about space practically has come through big, just as like this. Now when we say deep space, how deep is deep? This is an interesting question I always have, right? Where can you point it satellites around the earth, for instance? So satellites are too close for us. So all that stuff in Earth or but the ones we use for communication, Earth observation, weather prediction, GPS and so forth, there are only a few hundred to maybe a few tens of thousands of kilometers away. Even the international space station is only 400 kilometers above us, not much further away. They must say newcastle is from Canberra. So from the space station, they can literally just use a satellite mobile phone service to call down to the planet. So we talked all those spacecraft that leave the planet, that head out across the solar system. So for us, deep space starts at about 100,000 kilometers. And then everything else out to the far reaches of the universe. As far as you can go. Yeah. So we can cover about 95% of the universe. When we're doing radio astronomy. When you're doing radio, it's sure to be. That's right. So we started 100,000 kilometers and we communicate with all sorts of crafts. So what are the sorts of things that you're actually communicating with in terms of of missions or types? So right now we have nine spacecraft just studying the Sun. Our start. The middle of our solar system. We've got missions on the way to Mercury. Mission's an orbit around Venus at the moment. We have four spacecraft at the moon with at least another dozen heading off here in 2022. We've then got 13 missions at Mars. We have a mission out in the asteroid belt. One at Jupiter. Nothing at Saturn, Uranus and Neptune at the moment. Although we've had other missions go there. That's right. We've missions that have gone to Pluto. We've got missions studying asteroids, other missions studying comets. And then we have deep space telescopes. Yes. Looking at the universe in different wavelengths of light, including the brand new James workspace telescope. So you're essentially talking to all of these different things at different times. Now we're standing in front of this is the biggest dish here on site, right? Yeah, this is deep space station 43. It's the largest, durable, power-ball like dish in the Southern Hemisphere. And so one of the largest dishes in the world used for spacecraft communications. Whenever we talk about sizes of antennas, dishes like this, we're talking about the diameter of the dish. So the dish here is 70 metres in diameter. So it's 70 metres from edge to edge? Across the curve though, that's 109 metres. Okay. So you could put an entire foot-ball foot inside that dish easily. It still has plenty around a room to sit around and watch the game. The antenna is about the height of a 22-story building about 74 metres tall. And just the dish, and it's moving structure, weighs 4,000 tonnes, 4,000 kilograms. But it can be moved with better than hair with accuracy. So you're moving a, we'll say in scientific terms, ginormous thing, to precision of pointing at a little small spacecraft around a distant planet. Now how often would a dish like this point at a different craft every day? So each of the antennas on site will handle anywhere between 3 to 10 spacecraft each per day. So they're in constant movement. Literally going from one spacecraft to the next, the next, the next, the schedule is cramped. So we're, what do you know, actually what this is looking at now? I mean we're not pointing vaguely there. What's vaguely there? vaguely there? Currently 19.36 billion kilometres away is NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft. So that's talking to Voyager 2, right? Yeah. It's been out there for nearly 45 years that spacecraft and is still going a 12-year mission. It's now 45 years long. Both of the Voyager spacecraft, which we still talk to every day, are now in interstellar space. Space between the stars outside of the magnetic bubble of our sun and well beyond the planets, well beyond the dwarf planets. And now in that region of space that I don't think anybody ever expected to explore quite this soon. And that's talking to it right now as we recall. Yeah. We're receiving signals from that spacecraft, whispers from that spacecraft. And an amazing 160 bits per second. 160 bits, not mega bits. Not by it's not megabytes, not gigabytes bits per second. So it's a long, yeah, it's a long and slow conversation, but after 45 years it's still in excellent conversation. Awesome.