IT’S 50 years since Australia first ventured into space with the launch from the South Australian desert of our first satellite.
The size of a refrigerator, the Weapons Research Establishment Satellite (WRESAT) blasted off from Woomera aboard an American Redstone rocket on November 29, 1967, and completed 642 orbits before crashing back to Earth over the Atlantic Ocean.
Adelaide Hills retiree Karl Zalkauskas, one of the few remaining members of the original team, vividly recalls his work on Australia’s first satellite – and how he missed its historic launch.
Now 83, Karl was a young draftsman working at the Weapons Research Establishment at Salisbury when he was seconded to draw plans and specifications for the satellite.
“It was exciting what we achieved 50 years ago and amazing how quickly it has passed,” Karl said.
“Adelaide University came to us with the dimensions of the equipment they wanted to put into space. We were also given the interface drawing to match up with the Redstone rocket and the shape of the outside envelope.”
Karl and the team spent many long hours working on the project, which became all-consuming.
He later joined the team in Woomera for the first planned launch. Conditions in the town were primitive at the time but the comaraderie made up for the lack of facilities.
“Everyone was friendly and it was an exciting place to be because of the different projects under way,” he said.
But for Karl the launch was a disappointment after many months of hard work.
“At minus five minutes they called the launch off because there was a problem in the sequence ... I had to go back to work at Salisbury so I missed it,” he said.
The satellite was finally launched from the Woomera Range on November 29.
Karl went on to work as a senior draftsman on many other successful defence projects including Nulka and Jindavick.
He retired from Defence Science and Technology in 1988.
The Satellite Girls
Another SA retiree with memories of the 1960s “space race” is Heather Milhench.
In late 1957 the Soviet Union had launched Sputnik and in 1961 US President John F Kennedy announced his goal of sending an American to the Moon before the end of the decade.
Heather was a “human computer” during the early years of the space race, working at the Weapons Research Establishment’s Satellite Centre from 1960-63.
“I was part of a small team called the Satellite Girls,” she said. “I was Heather King at the time, just 16, straight out of school and good at maths.
“My official role was a computing assistant but we were known as computers.”
Heather and the other Satellite Girls were linked into a network of astronomers around Australia and with NASA researchers in the US.
“Each day we would receive a message via tele printer from NASA with data about the satellites which were orbiting over Australia,” she said.
“I had to use this data to calculate the exact orbit of these satellites and predict where and when in Australia they could best be observed.
“The only equipment I had was an antiquated calculating machine, about the size of a typewriter. Apart from this we had a huge table with a map of Australia displayed beneath clear plastic and another piece of rigid Perspex which we could slide over the map.
“Using my calculations, I would draw freehand, with a china-graph pencil, the orbits of satellites onto the Perspex and, from this, decide where the best observations were likely to be made.”
In the early years satellite observations were done by backyard astronomers and volunteers who belonged to Moonwatch teams in most Australian capital cities.
Heather would record the relevant details which were phoned through to the Post Office’s telegram department and sent to the appropriate Moonwatch team leader. She often wondered if the telegram operator thought they were transmitting top secret messages.
Heather married a RAAF officer in 1963 and had to leave her job at the Satellite Centre. It was not long after that the centre closed.
Advances in technology and the development of space tracking stations across the world meant human computers, like Heather, and Moonwatchers were no longer needed.
“Today it’s hard to imagine how ‘primitive’ our methods were ... now it is the satellites themselves which are so vital in maintaining the sophisticated communications systems we all take for granted,” Heather said.
These days, the Satellite Girls track one another instead and get together occasionally to renew old friendships and reminisce about their role in the exciting days of the space race.
