Sky Trackers

Both series and telemovie were created by Jeff Peck and Tony Morphett, and executive-produced by Patricia Edgar on behalf of the Australian Children's Television Foundation (ACTF).

The subsequent TV series, which had an entirely new cast fronted by Petra Yared and Zbych Trofimiuk, was shot at the Australia Telescope Compact Array[2] in the New South Wales outback near Narrabri.

[1] Combining adventure, teenage romance, and scientific endeavour, Sky Trackers the series centres around three kids who live beneath the gleaming white dishes of a space tracking station in the Australian outback – where their scientist parents work.

[9] And as they experience the excitement of adventures such as tracking meteorites, searching for a bush ranger's treasure, listening to signals from outer space, seeing auroras, finding hidden caves, and hunting for UFOs, they learn a lot about the world, themselves, and each other[5][7][10] – as they live, love, fight and laugh together.

[11] The Sky Trackers telemovie was produced by the Australian Children's Television Foundation (ACTF) in association with The Disney Channel, and was written by Tony Morphett from a concept by Jeff Peck.

[7] CSIRO staff had "a constant and vital role in the creation of Sky Trackers", making themselves "available as consultants throughout the development of the scripts, as did NASA";[11] and Dr Karl Kruszelnicki was also employed as a science advisor for the series.

[4] Dr Tamara Jernigan, a NASA astronaut who has spent more than 800 hours in space and orbited the Earth more than 400 times, visited Australia at the invitation of the ACTF in June 1995 and made a four day tour of schools in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane.

Welcome to the world of Sky Trackers, the latest effort from the trail-blazing Australian Children’s Television Foundation [...] The cast is excellent particularly the teenagers Petra Jared as science-crazy Nikki Colbert and Zbych Trofimiuk as Mike Masters, whose scientific interests range about as far as a Jimi Hendrix lick.

"[30] The Australian Children's Television Foundation produced three Sky Trackers the series teaching packages for use in schools in the form of three Curriculum Packs:[23][31] Each pack contained three Sky Trackers episodes on videotape, introduced by the young actors, with teacher's background notes on the topic and suggested questions and student activities aimed at upper primary and junior secondary school (years 5-8) classrooms.

The featured episodes are a dramatic blend of stories about science, deep space, the environment and family life, which provide launch points to explore a range of issues, encouraging kids to ponder, debate, discuss, question and investigate further.

[35] Sky Trackers episode-clips also feature in ACTF's publication What's Fair, by Val Catchpoole – an educational multi-media resource for teaching ethical inquiry in schools.

[43] It performed particularly well in Europe where it was sold to ARD Germany, Danmarks Radio, NRK Norway, the Finnish Broadcasting Company, Slovak TV, RTSR Switzerland, AVRO in the Netherlands, and RTE Ireland who aired it from 28 August 1995.

[42] The series has also been sold to the Philippines, Nigeria, Turkey, Slovak Republic, Israel, Iceland, Cyprus, Arabic-speaking territories, Hong Kong, Mexico, Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Sri Lanka;[6] and to the Encore Media Corporation, for its WAM!

Tidbinbilla Tracking Station - now called Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex - the setting for Sky Trackers movie
One of the telescope dishes of the Australia Telescope Compact Array , seen in orientation used for Sky Trackers episode "Skating the Dish"