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Delta station listening to spaceHOLLANDALE (AP) — For more than a quarter of a century, the U.S. Navy has farmed a unique crop in the rich black soil of the Mississippi Delta — long rows of metal poles topped with leaf-rake antenna that listen for heavenly noises.“We still get a lot of funny looks, but most people in the area know we are here and what we’re doing,” said B A Naron, who manages the Naval Space Surveillance System station set up in 1938, soon after the Russians put Sputnik into orbitThe station is one of six receiver sites along an east west path fromGeorgia to California designed to pick up signals bounced off of satellites and other objects in space by three large transmitters located in other areas of the country.“I guess you could say the Navy picked a cotton patch in the Delta because this is exactly the right spot to to fill a gap in its surveillance fence,” said Naron, who oversees the complex that features almost a mile of antennas, including one hedgerow of the spindley poles that stretches 1,600 feet.There’s a sign out on Mississippi 1 that reads Spasursta’ — Space Surveillance Station — and people get curious and drive out here to see what’s going on,” Naron said. “They drive up to our operations building, decide they shouldn’t be here, and drive away.Naron said the unusual facility,nwhich from the air apparently resembles a landing strip, on occasion attracts curious crop duster pilots. But there have been no attempted landings and “most of them are so used to us they fly right over without trying to go around.The station, off limits to the general public, began as a naval research laboratory but later was placed under Naval Space Surveillance when that programwas commissioned as a naval command in 1961.The long rows of antennas are the most striking feature of the station, which also features whitewashed block buildings housing computerized monitoring equipment and workshops. Underground cables feed amplified signals from the field antennas to computers, which in turn relay the data to thecommand’s headquarters in Virginia.“This is really a silent radar, a continuous wave of energy at a set frequency,” he said. “When a satellite passes through this band of energy, then some of the energy is reflected back, and we are here topick up that reflection.”Naron said the station and others in the network also help with the nation’s space shuttle program, providing information needed to keep the shuttle from encountering other objects in space during launches and re-entry.”The specialists manning the equipment are civilians, employed by a private firm with a Navy contract. The installation itself belongs to the Navy.Naron said the processed information collected at the station has a wide range of uses, both military and civilian, ranging from pinpointing the orbits of stable satellites for use in ship navagation.tr-r*.PRODUCTSSHARP COPIERSIBM, CANON, AND SHARPTYPEWRITERSSHARP, CANON, TOWACALCULATORSSALES - RENTALS - LEASINGCALL 649-1716ioped bpolicekiller, lt;ically i kill, is ings.Galve patholog sies on studied is certchis is notBy tlthe peo] no douf dealing4 4LeexplcTl
Newspaper Details
Laurel Leader Call
Laurel, Mississippi, US
Mon, Apr 13, 1987
Page 8
Full Page
Clipped by
Travis R.
AL, USA 18 Jul 2022
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