Sixth Sense! maybe?

We took a drive to New Norcia a small monastic town in the Wheatbelt, we passed this satellite dish just before we entered the town.

It belongs to the European Space Agency, who saw New Norcia as the perfect location for their first high tech state-of-the-art deep space ground station project.
The ground station's first role was to be actively involved in the ESA Mars Express project, but the mission ended in tragedy. The dish played a major role in the Rosetta comet mission.

So how did a deep space ground station end up in a small farming and monastic community, 150kms from Perth? It all began when a Spanish scientist arrived in New Norcia one Sunday and simply rang the bell of the monastery, to asked if it was possible to build a high tech deep space ground station on their property.
The Benedictine community, who have led the simple life in the area for over 150 years, embraced the idea . To the general observer it would appear to be one of the most unique coming together of the "old " and "new " worlds. But the monks and scientists will tell you, it is all working just fine and both are very keen to find out if there are signs of life out there. It isn't the first time Western Australia has been involved in satellite communications for NASA and other space agencies...
(Info found on the "Western Australia Vista" web site)

Sensing we are not alone! A stretch for the topic today...