On 6 August, ESA’s 35m deep space station at New Norcia, Australia, will track the arrival of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory at the Red Planet.

On 31 July, in a test, New Norcia successfully acquired telemetry from MSL at 13:30 CEST; all data was passed to NASA JPL. Two additional test tracking sessions are booked for 2 and 3 August.(We’ll post an update on NNO’s involvement in MSL arrival later in the week.)

ESA's 35m station at New Norcia, Australia, will track NASA's MSL arrival at Mars. Credit: ESA

ESA’s 35m station at New Norcia, Australia, will track NASA’s MSL arrival at Mars. Credit: ESA

More details on NNO via ESA web.

And, if you haven’t seen this yet, surf on over to NASA’s JPL website to access a very cool visualisation tool that demos the entire EDL (entry, descent and landing) phase – note: Java required.