at the end of September next year, The Royal Gazette has learned.

But the fate of the Cooper's Island tracking station remains up in the air.

The report, first carried in American magazine Satellite Times, was confirmed yesterday by NASA station director Steve Stompf.

He said NASA plans to vacate the facility by September 30, 1998 but the installation may not close altogether.

"Seventy-five percent of our work is non-NASA, so it (the station) may be offered to other US agencies,'' he said, adding that the US Air Force may be interested in taking it over, but those discussions are still in the preliminary phase.

The space agency also plans to maintain UHF air-to-ground voice support capability on the Island though where, how and by whom is under review.

Presently NASA has subcontracted a US-based company -- Allied Signal Corporation -- to staff the tracking station. Mr. Stompf could not comment on the fate of its 48 technicians or whether they would remain to run the UHF voice up-link.

Bermuda's primary role in recent years has been to support space shuttle launch phases, but new satellite technology has rendered the Earth-based tracking facility redundant; by November of this year a new tracking and data relay satellite will take over the job.

In addition to shuttle support, the tracking station provides range safety for un-manned expendable launch vehicles, (ELV's). In the event of a problem during launch leading to imminent danger to life, explained Mr. Stompf, staff at Cooper's Island would terminate the lift-off.

"I would expect there will still be requirements to support ELV launches,'' he added.

NASA set up the tracking station in 1961 to take advantage of Bermuda's geographic location and its proximity to the US Naval Air Station provided perfect logistical support.

In its heyday, the station was staffed by over 150 communication and telemetry specialists working around the clock, providing a key voice link to NASA for the original Mercury crews. In 1963 the station fell under NASA's broadened mandate to provide support for all peaceful and scientific projects.

"Bermuda was very important to us, especially in the early years of manned-flight,'' Mr. Stompf said. "The rest of (NASA's) tracking stations were for orbital support, but here we provided the communications as well.'' During the Apollo missions all voice communication -- including Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's first historic words from the surface of the moon -- were beamed to Bermuda and routed via Cable & Wireless to NASA's flight control centre in Houston.

As NASA and the Apollo era wound down, the tracking station was kept busy providing support for the US's ill-fated space station, Skylab.

An unknown fate now awaits at least three of the five dish antennae dotting the east end landscape; two "S-band telemetry'' dishes may remain while the others will be dismantled, said Mr. Stompf.

The only certainty it appears is the fate of the station director himself: "Me? I'm planning to retire to Florida.''