This is a brief report outlining some of the activities that were undertaken at the CSIRO's Parkes Telescope in preparation for the upcoming Mars Tracks, for the week commencing 4 August, 2003.

Click here to see the preliminary schedule for the first of the Mars test tracks commencing on 8 September, 2003. Track Schedule.

Click here to see the work that was performed in upgrading the dish surface in March 2003. Surface Upgrade.

Click here to see Status Report #2.

Click on images to see the full-size versions

The Mars Receiver arrived at the telescope on Wednesday, 6 August.
The ATNF receiver team that built and installed the receiver ( Group photo L-R: George Graves, Matthew McMullen, Graham Morey, Mark Bowen, David Catlin, Brett Dawson and Russell Bolton (kneeling) ).

The Mars Receiver was immediately readied to be hoisted to the focus cabin.

Up she goes. The boys immediately set to work to install the receiver and perform tests to verify that the receiver met specs.

From 6-7 August, Andrew Hunt with Ken Guest and Jamshid Karimi from Tidbinbilla, completed the installation of the Data and Voice Network Equipment.

On 5 August, Ken Reeves prepared the area designated for the NASA racks by installing air vents prior to their arrival next Tuesday, 12 August.

From 6-8 August, Mike Kesteven completed development of the new tracking software, written specifically to drive the telescope for the Mars tracks. The first test run of the software was successfully completed on Friday, 8 August.