Woomera, South Australia and Woomera was chosen as a site for such a facility. The establishment of the Woomera Immigration Detention Centre in 1999, through the refurbishment of the original Woomera Village construction camp at 'Woomera West', eventually brought in new permanent staff (as the Nurrungar people were leaving) to settle and maintain the village population at around 1,200. The immigration detention centre, however, proved to be a highly controversial facility and it closed in early 2003 after only about 36 months of operation, at which point the land and buildings were handed back to the Defence Department. Following the closure of the
Troll Satellite Station by the Norwegian Space Centre to establish an earth station at Troll, but the lack of all-year activity stranded the plans. Instead, SvalSat was established to serve as an earth station for NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS). Longyearbyen was selected because of its high latitude, which allows all satellites with an orbit above to use only a single ground station—yet download from every orbit. The Svalbard facility opened on 15 April 1999 and was originally owned by the Norwegian Space Centre. Kongsberg Satellite Services was established in 2002 to jointly operate SvalSat and Tromsø Satellite Station (TSS). In 2003, Norwegian