IF NASA’s latest super-duper space buggy finds life on Mars this time around, humankind should thank the firefighters of the ACT. When the outskirts of Canberra were burning five weeks ago, a legion of NASA scientists in the US feared they would lose one of their prime space tracking stations, the Tidbinbilla plant 35km southwest of the nation’s capital. The loss of Tidbinbilla’s dishes would have been catastrophic, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory director Charles Elachi told a gathering of firefighters, space scientists and technicians yesterday.