History

In 1993, NASA recognised the potential of an experimental program called "Telescopes In Education (TIE)", and provided support which has allowed the program to evolve from a struggling high maintenance education outreach effort, to a dynamic and wide reaching program that allows students, initially in the US and now from across the world, to remotely control telescopes located in Mount Wilson (California, USA), Chile and now in Australia.

During its time in operation, TIE has been the recipient of a number of awards, including the 1996 Rolex Award for Enterprise for Applied Sciences and Invention, and the 1996 NASA Group Achievement Award. TIE director, Gilbert A. Clark, has received the 1996 NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Award for Excellence, and the JPL NOVA (Notable Organizational Value-Added) Award for his work on TIE. He has also received the Clifford W. Holmes Award for Innovative Telescope Design on behalf of TIE, and Soka University (Japan) awarded Gil with their highest achievement medal and proclamation in recognition of the international contribution TIE has made to education and peace.

Construction on the NTQO began in early 2002, with the observatory shell completed by February of that year. Installation and fitting of the telescope and computer rooms started soon after. The network cabling was put in place over three weekend's in June, and fine tuning of the initial telescope and CCD camera began in August.

Late August also saw the installation of our satellite communications, and a solar power system. Our offical commissioning took place on the 7th October 2002. A second telescope and mount was installed mid-2004, and a colour filter wheel was installed on the primary telescope in July 2003.

Concurrent to this process, fourth year engineering students have undertaken team-based project work to design and install an integrated automation and remote-sensing platform, in order to provide a robust and fully autonomous system.

The facility is currently in lock-down mode as we perform the final installation and configuration of these projects, a culmination of over four years of student work. It is expected that the system will come online for a beta-testing phase in late 2007.