Despite what you may think, Australia has a long history of space activities. But this is the first time the Australian public has been asked its opinions on space.
A concrete plinth marking ground zero of the first Totem atomic test in South Australia in 1953.
Photo: Andrew Burden
The British atomic tests at Emu Field in South Australia pre-dated Maralinga by three years. Largely forgotten, they remind us the costs of harmful political decisions are borne by the most powerless.
Australia worked closely with the UK, Europe and USA in developing space capability in the 1950s and 1960s.
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Australia was a significant global space player during the 1950s and 1960s. Now we’re one of only two OECD countries not to have a space agency. What happened?
Marcoo was a 1.4 kilotonne ground-level nuclear test carried out at Maralinga in 1956. The contaminated debris was buried at this site in the 1967 clean-up known as Operation Brumby.
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History is writ large in the remote areas around Woomera and the Nullarbor: from the fossils of microscopic, cell-like creatures to ancient stone tools to the deitrus of rocket tests and the painful legacy of the Maralinga atomic blasts.