Page 1215 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 11 April 2018
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
What many people know, but certainly not everyone, is that Australia and the ACT in particular played a vital part in the Apollo 11 mission. Contrary to the movie The Dish, which portrayed the Parkes radio telescope as receiving the signals from the moon landing, it was actually the Honeysuckle Creek station located just outside of Canberra that received the famous first footage from the moon. A 26-metre dish was then located at Honeysuckle Creek. It was later moved to Tidbinbilla space tracking station and it is now decommissioned, and that was the very antenna which received and relayed to the entire world the historic first TV images of Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon on 21 July 1969.
Apart from the television footage they provided, Honeysuckle Creek and Tidbinbilla space tracking stations had voice and telemetry contact with the lunar and command modules. The images that came from Honeysuckle Creek tracking station were sent direct to OTC Sydney by Williamsdale and Deakin. The images were then selected by NASA for broadcast to the world.
At the conclusion of the Apollo moon missions in 1972 Honeysuckle Creek began supporting regular Skylab passes, the Apollo scientific stations left on the moon by astronauts, and assisting the deep space network with interplanetary tracking commitments. In 1974 at the conclusion of the Skylab program Honeysuckle Creek joined the deep space network as Deep Space Station 44, or DSS44.
Honeysuckle Creek closed in December 1981, and that was when the 26-metre antenna that had been used in the moon landings was relocated to the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex at nearby Tidbinbilla, and it was renamed Deep Space Station 46, or DSS46. It remained in use until late 2009. It is still located there at Tidbinbilla. If you visit the tracking station it is immediately behind the public car park at the visitors centre. It is still very visible, even though it has been decommissioned. In May 2010 the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics declared the antenna a historical aerospace site, so the antenna will remain in place at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex in perpetuity as a historic site.
Many of the people who worked at the space tracking station in the ACT during the lunar missions are still alive, and some of them still live in the ACT. The upcoming 50th anniversary is a fitting and significant time to recognise and honour their contribution. I understand an Apollo 11 50th anniversary committee has been established, largely by ex-staff of the ACT tracking stations, led by John Saxon, with support from Hamish Lindsay, Mike Dinn and others, all of whom worked at those tracking stations, and specifically Honeysuckle Creek, during the Apollo 11 mission.
My motion recommends that this Assembly appropriately prepares for the Apollo 11 50th anniversary next year to recognise the important part that the ACT played in this global historic event. I know this small committee of ex-staff is working on a range of ideas, many of which are already underway. Their ideas include possible sculpture, a movie, dinners, visits by astronauts and a walk of fame around the original Honeysuckle Creek dish.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video