AUSSIE MOON MAKERS
Australia’s role in the US space program dates back to 1962, when it began working jointly with the US to help track NASA’S Mariner 2 spacecraft.
In 1965 the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex (CDSCC), run by the CSIRO on behalf of NASA, was opened near the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve with the aim of supporting the Apollo program.
At the opening, Prime Minister Robert Menzies declared the Us-australian project to be a “great step forward, a notable event in this technological period of our lives”.
By the late ’60s, Australia’s role in helping NASA was confirmed.
They planned on using three telescopes to track the moon landing: one at Goldstone in California and, in Australia, the Parkes radio telescope in NSW and Canberra’s Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Centre, when Tidbinbilla was put out of action after a fire.
AUSTRALIAN CONNECTION
John Saxon, 84, was an operations supervisor at the Honeysuckle Creek manned space-flight tracking station in 1969. At 12.56 AEST, images of Neil Armstrong stepping foot on the lunar surface transmitted from Honeysuckle to the world.
“I knew that Honeysuckle, from my job interview at least, was a manned space-flight station built specifically for the lunar distance support of the Apollo missions. And later on we supported Skylab as well. So
I was well aware that we were going to do Apollo and I was excited. How lucky can you be?
“We knew all the missions were momentous in their way but actually stepping foot on the moon’s surface for the first time? We thought that was possibly more momentous. My position was to work on the two-man operations console, which, if you like, conducted the band.
“We had built an incredibly powerful simulation system and we had aircraft coming out simulating spacecraft and the astronauts and the heartbeats and the respiration – everything that would happen during Apollo could be simulated.
“It was drummed into us from the beginning that this was a special thing. [But] there were times when not a lot happened. There might have been times when the crew were asleep. You’re still keeping an eye on the heartbeats and respiration and all that, just in case that data wasn’t getting back to Houston.
“We couldn’t simulate what the pictures – when they got to the moon – would look like. Nobody knew; Houston didn’t know. [It] was almost an afterthought. We were incredibly lucky that we had a guy working on our video equipment who could receive and convert the video into something people could watch on a normal TV.
“There was no nipping about and carrying on like they show in the films every time a space craft goes past a planet. People said, ‘Oh, that went pretty well and according to plan.’ I suppose it was a missionaccomplished feeling.
“We’d been visited by a lot of NASA managers and operations people who all said, ‘This is just the start. We’ll be going to the moon and living on the moon in a few years’ time and then after that, Mars, and you guys have got jobs for life.’ It didn’t work out quite that way.”
David Cooke, 87, was the
senior radio receiver engineer at the Parkes Radio Telescope at the time of the moon landing. The Parkes signal was used 10 minutes after Armstrong stepped foot on the lunar surface and was used for the rest of the two-anda-half-hour broadcast.
“We were apprehensive. Everyone will tell you – they each had a part to play and were mostly concerned that their part would go well and not break down. I was responsible for the receivers so I was anxious to make sure it went smoothly.
“In particular we had to follow the capsule as it was on its way to the moon so we had several days where we were tracking the spacecraft. The Americans would send a list of the predicted position of the space craft every few minutes so we were able to point the telescope in the correct direction and pick up signals.
“I think the day before was perfectly fine. Probably there were signs [of a storm] when we pointed the telescope down to the point on the horizon where we
“IT WAS DRUMMED INTO US FROM THE BEGINNING THAT THIS WAS A SPECIAL THING”
expected the spacecraft to rise, to be ready. And it was then that the wind started to come up and the storm started to blow. I was still confident nothing would go wrong and was confident in the people running the telescope.
“There was a little TV screen, a little green cathode ray tube only a few inches across, showing the picture and there we saw Armstrong come down the ladder and put his foot on the moon and say his famous words. That was pretty amazing and all the Americans who were operating the equipment, they were amazed, too.
“We tracked for a while and finished and [then] I went outside and looked up at the sky and saw there was the moon! I thought, ‘Well isn’t that amazing – there’s a man up there and we helped to get him up there.’
“Then I took a photo and in the background there’s the remnants of the storm that was disappearing away. And I’m told at the same time one of the astronauts took a photo and he could see the weather systems over eastern Australia and the same storm from the other direction. We should’ve waved; it was quite extraordinary.”