Belinda Smith

He was best known for his book The Naked Ape, a zoological and behavioural study of humans published in 1967.

Here he is in an interview from 2000 talking about how he came to write The Naked Ape.

MUSIC PLAYS

Thank you.

Yes, this was one of NASA's science objectives for the Artemis 2 mission.

They got the astronauts to analyse and photograph geologic features such as craters on the far side of the Moon.

Yeah, quite similar to Brian.

And while the effects of this decision may not be felt immediately...

That's Professor Fred Watson.

He's at Macquarie University, but he used to be the astronomer at large with the Australian government.

So right now, Australia has a strategic partnership with the European Southern Observatory, but that will expire next year.

So what does that cost us and what have we gained from it?

Can we expand on that engineering side, please, and the benefits of building instruments for telescopes?

So how do they create spin-offs that us non-astronomers get to use, and what are the economic benefits?

And on the science side of things, we do have optical telescopes in Australia, right?

Why do we need access to these bigger ones in South America?

And the ELT is being built there.

That's the Extremely Large Telescope.

And it's due to start test observations in 2029.

So Australian astronomers will miss out on access to that.