Pine Gap is the commonly used name for a satellite tracking station at 23°47′56″S 133°44′13″E / 23.799°S 133.737°E / -23.799; 133.737, some 18 kilometres (11 mi) south-west of the town of Alice Springs in the centre of Australia which is operated by both Australia and the United States. Since 1988 it has been officially called the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap; previously, it was known as Joint Defence Space Research Facility.
Read more about Pine Gap: Facility, Operations, Protests
Famous quotes containing the words pine and/or gap:
“In the atom’s fizz and pop we heard possibility
uncorked. Taffeta wraps whispered on davenports.
A new planet bloomed above us; in its light
the stumps of cut pine gleamed like dinner plates.
The world was beginning all over again, fresh and hot;
we could have anything we wanted.”
—Lynn Emanuel (b. 1949)
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)