Current status of the Tidbinbilla 70m radio telescope

The Tidbinbilla 70m radio telescope, also known as Deep Space Station 43 (DSS-43), is one of the antennas at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex (CDSCC) located at Tidbinbilla near Canberra. The CDSCC is one of three stations that make up the NASA Deep Space Network (DSN), and the primary purpose of station´s antennas is to track spacecraft and space probes for NASA and other space agencies. Some antenna time not used for space communication is scheduled for Host Country radio-astronomy observations and is open to the astronomical community. In this paper, I report the current status of the 70m dish and highlight two recent development projects: the OTF mode and the wideband K-band receiver system.