The minister, a former mathematician and anti-apartheid activist himself, says South Africa will have its own space agency by the end of 2006. Legislation is being drafted and will be submitted later this year.

The minister says space has become very important for communication, research and climate observation. South Africa already has the best star-viewing facilities on the vast African continent, with the Southern African Large Telescope, or SALT, officially opening in chilly Sutherland, inland of Cape Town, later this year.

Third world countries like Brazil, India and Nigeria have already established their own space agencies. However, the minister says South Africa will not be doubling up the initiatives of other countries.

Rather, he says, the country needs its own agency in order to cooperate with others.

He adds that even though South Africa does not conduct space exploration, it needs to cooperate with countries that do, such as the US and Russia.

Africa's first person to go into space was a South African, Mark Shuttleworth, an information technology billionaire who trained as a cosmonaut in Russia.

The minister denies that the space initiative is an unecessary expense in a country where close to half the adult population is unemployed and HIV/AIDS has infected roughly a quarter of the adult population.

He says the country' s budget and the expertise on the ground will dictate what can and cannot be done. He says the many cutting-edge telescopes the country has been able to build using the latest in homebuilt technology to shave costs is indicative that it is within the counrty's capability.

The minister says that despite concerns that South Africa is not producing sufficiently skilled science graduates, the establishment of a space agency will motivate students. He says the country has wonderful scientists, albeit a limited amount, and that young people need to be mentored by these scientists before they retire.

Meanwhile, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has expressed "serious interest" in building two large-dish antennas in South Africa as part of its Deep Space Array Network (DSAN), said Derek Hanekom, South Africa's deputy science and technology minister.

Hanekom said the areas being looked at are two sites near the isolated and dry Northern Cape towns of Springbok and Upington. The Northern Cape is also the site of South Africa's bid for the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope cluster.

The deep space array network is designed to enhance the capabilities of NASA's existing Deep Space Network, an international network of antennas supporting interplanetary spacecraft missions, as well as radio and radar astronomy observations for the exploration of the solar system and the universe.

According to the website of the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages and operates the network for NASA, it also supports selected earth-orbiting missions.

It is understood that the deep space array network will increase the capabilities of the existing network by a factor of three.

Currently, the Deep Space Network consists of three deep-space communications facilities located about 120 degrees of longitude apart from each other around the world.

One is at Goldstone, in California's Mojave Desert; another near Madrid, Spain; and a third near Canberra, Australia. There are none in Africa.

According to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, "this strategic placement permits constant observation of spacecraft as the earth rotates, and helps to make the DSN the largest and most sensitive scientific telecommunications system in the world".

The Springbok and Upington sites being considered by NASA lie on almost the same longitude as the existing Spanish facility.

Hanekom said NASA would take a decision "within the next couple of months".

"We've had serious interest expressed in South Africa by NASA for what they call their Deep Space Array Network. The competing country is Spain," he said.

"The location for the DSAN would be Springbok and Upington in the Northern Cape. Of all the areas chosen, Springbok has an annual rainfall of less than 100mm a year. What NASA actually wants is two sites that are close to each other, but with two different climatic zones, which is effectively what you have

"Both sites have low rainfall, but of the two Springbok is wetter," he said, noting that any site needs "an absolute minimum number of days that are wasted due to rain or due to weather conditions. Between the two sites, that is what would be achieved."

It is understood DSAN operations are highly sensitive to rain and water vapour, making the hot and dry Northern Cape an ideal location for building such a facility.

According to JPL, the antennas and their data delivery systems make it possible, among other things, to: acquire telemetry data from spacecraft; transmit commands to spacecraft; track spacecraft positions and velocities; perform very-long-baseline interferometry observations; and measure variations in radio waves for radio science experiments.

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