Australia's part in History

[earth_bound_misfit]

I took the family for a drive today to see if we could find some snow. We ended up at Honeysuckle Creek, where a former NASA tracking site was. Not much left now except the concrete foundations, though it's a very nice spot for camping and is now part of the Namadgi National Park Honeysuckle provided the first TV pictures for the world to see of Neils first Moon walk.
More info at these links, google for more:
http://users.bigpond.net.au/eagle33/places/hsk.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeysuckl ... ng_Station
http://www.honeysucklecreek.net/

Here's a few snaps I took with my phone...

 

[Aerospace_Cadet]

Great Tid bit for the Apollo fans! It is true that this station did recieve the signals at the time they first walked on the moon. They also recorded the signal which was far better quality then what we all saw. They had to downsample and broadcast out the feed which made it lose a great amount of detail.

Today we would just use one of our many relay satellites just as what is used by the Shuttle and the ISS. Before that they had to hand off from one station to the next as the earth rotated... a very labor intensive process.

 

[doublehelix]

Awesome pictures, misfit! Thanks for posting them!

-dh

 

[AstroBrian]

The dish used at Honeysuckle Creek for the audio is now located at the Deep Space Network near Tidbinbilla. I remember seeing it there in 2003, and I think it was still in use. If you ever get the chance to visit the center out there, is very nice. There is a nice museum and according to my wife, some of the best meat pies she has ever had at the cafe there.

 

[JonClarke]

I was talking to Glen Nagle who runs the visitor's centre at Tidbinbilla two weeks ago and he said that the old Honeysuckle Ck dish is due to be decomissioned. There is considerable debate as to its fate and, if it is saved, who is going to pay for it.

Jon

 

[earth_bound_misfit]

It would be nice it the Commonwealth ponied up the money to ensure it wasn't just cut up as scrape. Maybe the visitor centre could open it up, I for one would love to climb up onto the reflector, though I suppose in this crazy day of health and safety acts that would never be allowed