Australia's Space Program

Drats, I missed it. At ten minutes to six this morning, space shuttle Atlantis-attached to the Hubble Telescope in space while performing repairs- flew across the southern Western Australian sky. I was awake, the morning cold, the sky clear but I just wasn't aware it would be there. People on the radio were prattling on and on about the celestial show. OK, I feel left out, so stop already. The best I've ever seen is a meteor shower and an almost-aurora borealis back in Ohio.

Come to think of it, Australian skies seem to be chock-a-block with space craft. NASA has tracking towers here. One lonely WA country post office wound up being a temporary communications central, at least for a short while, between space and ground control because technical failure elsewhere. Decades on, the now mini-museum wears its aeronautical heroism with great pride. Astronauts mention OZ in their transmissions. I suppose being the only large land mass south of the equator for about a kajillion miles is a helpful milepost.

But stuff isn't just whizzing past, rockets are landing here- or at least bits of them. Russian space station Mir was a close miss in 2001. Skylab made a grand appearance in the small fishing village of Esperance in 1979. Big and little bits blazed a path into people's backyards, including part of Skylab's toilet. Proudly on display, the cosmic commode has added a tourism element to the area. Town council wasn't always pleased with the scrap. They sent a ticket to NASA fining them $400 for littering.
It remains unpaid.