NASA this week hailed its return to operating at Cooper’s Island this summer as a stellar success.The US space agency this year deployed a mobile tracking station at the St David’s nature reserve to help monitor rockets travelling from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.The mobile system can be used not only to support supply missions to the International Space Station, but also launch satellites to low-Earth orbits.During launches, a team of ten personnel will travel to Bermuda to configure the mobile tracking system, conduct the operation, and then pack the systems to be returned to Wallops.The spokesman said such short-term deployments would result in not only lower costs, but also improved scheduling options.Steven Kremer, NASA Wallops deputy range manager, explained: “Owning, deploying, and controlling our own assets means control over scheduling.“It gives us higher confidence in promising range availability to our customers when they come to Wallops for services.“In addition, our services offered from Bermuda will benefit other customers who launch from other ranges such as the United States Air Force’s Eastern Range in Florida.”Between 1961 and 1997, Coopers Island housed a NASA tracking station as part of its Manned Space Flight Network. During that period, the station tracked every manned NASA space flight.Use of the station ended due to technological improvements in space tracking systems.In 2008, NASA Wallops briefly returned to the station for tracking purposes, and last year the European Space Agency established a temporary station on Cooper’s Island as part of an agreement to track missions from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana.Earlier this year, the Bermuda Government signed a four-year agreement allowing NASA to use the land.NASA’s second-in-command Lori Garver said that the agency was working with private partners in US industry to send launch vehicles to the International Space Centre to help with supplies and logistics.“They can utilise this unique location at a critical point in their launch to track and make sure everything is okay with the spacecraft as it travels to the space stations,” she said.Useful website: www.nasa.gov.