 In 1973, American Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans and Harrison Schmitt paid a state visit to Karachi amid great fanfare, to see the SUPARCO's headquarters.During the early 1970s, the Islamabad Ionospheric Station within Quaid-e-Azam University was set up and the NASA Landsat ground station was established near Rawat.Entering in the late 1970s era, the space programme suffered many setbacks and experienced a number of difficulties, including lack of government response, shortage of technical personnel and expert engineers needed for the country to have an effective space programme.