[SatNews] Mr. Leif Österbo, Director Satellite Management Services, SSC, has said that a recent article in China South Morning Post mischaracterized SSC’s satellite ground station operations located in Dongara, Australia.

To provide further clarification to the article, SSC, through separate subsidiaries, operates two separate and distinct ground stations in the Dongara area, respectively named Dongara West and Dongara East.

Dongara West is owned, operated and maintained by SSC’s U.S.-based subsidiary, Universal Space Network (“USN”). It has been in operation since 2001, eight years prior to USN’s purchase by SSC. USN functions under a U.S. Government Special Security Agreement (SSA) and primarily serves U.S.-Government and commercial customers.

The Dongara East ground station is a new facility that is owned and operated by SSC, and its purpose is to provide services to the European, Asian, and other civil space agencies and commercial space companies. Dongara East was used by SSC for supporting the docking between Shenzhou VIII and the Tiangong-1 Each of the two facilities has its own control center and separate antennas and ground equipment. These facilities provide satellite ground station services to customers around the world.

SSC and USN maintain separate and distinct capabilities between its Dongara West and Dongara East ground stations to fully serve the global satellite services markets.

Original news item lead......
[SatNews] The South Morning China Post reported on Saturday that there has been a Chinese acquisition of a tracking resource in Australia...