From a quiet field alongside grazing cows just south of Canberra, NASA is looking a long way into space.
The Deep Space Communication Complex in the Paddys River valley at Tidbinbilla is one of only three in the world that facilitates communication between NASA and spacecraft, satellites and astronauts.
The other two sites are in Spain and California.
NASA's InSight mission to Mars is one of almost 40 missions supported by the Canberra facility which is run by 90 staff from the CSIRO.
"Sometimes we describe ourselves as the air traffic control for space," the CSIRO's Glen Nagle said.
NASA sent a robotic geologist into space on May 5 on a mission to explore the inside of the red planet.
"The inside of Mars is a mystery," Mr Nagle said.
"The interior of a planet is the engine of a world and it's what makes that world the way it is.
"It will be the first time we've had a mission to land a seismometer on another world.
"This instrument can measure vibrations as small as half the width of a hydrogen atom."
The spacecraft is expected to rendezvous with Mars in November.
"The mission is using an Atlas V rocket, one of NASA's most powerful boosters to give it a good kick to get to Mars in that time," Mr Nagle said.
"NASA wants to be able to detect that if there's an impact on the other side of the planet from a meteor, for example, they will be able to detect the vibrations that run through the planet.
"We don't know whether Mars has a molten core or not; we want to know what's going on in the mantle structure.
"We're really trying to understand everything we can about what's inside the planet."
A must-visit tourist attraction
Visitors to the Deep Space Communication Complex have described the site as one of Canberra's best-kept secrets.
"We are effectively the telephone exchange for the universe," Mr Nagle said.
The site is home to four operational dishes and two more retired dishes on site.
"We have the 70-metre-deep station dish and three 34-metre-in-diameter antennas."
The network has coordinated and controlled hundreds of manned and un-manned ventures into space, including the first fly-by of Neptune in the 1980s and the Curiosity Mars Rover mission in 2012.
"It was also our dish here in Canberra that captured those first flickering images of Neil Armstrong coming down the ladder and stepping onto the surface of the Moon," Mr Nagle said.
"Our 26-metre antenna was at Honeysuckle Creek on July 21, 1969 that it captured those first images."
Mr Nagle said new missions were taking off all the time.
"Missions that are studying the sun, missions that are visiting planets, moons, asteroids, comets and a handful of the deep space telescopes that see hundreds of millions of kilometres away," he said.
"All of these missions represent 27 countries around the world that are exploring space.
"It's not just NASA that we're supporting; it's missions for Russia, India, Japan and all the European Space Agency nations.
"And they rely on us to provide this communication."
