Background to where the Apollo 11 Lunar TV broadcast
was received.
Click to play the 30MB Flash video file. (Duration:
8 min 31 sec.) |
The above video file is an extract from the
second Honeysuckle Creek DVD
(“The Moonwalks as seen at Honeysuckle
Creek” – the Super 8 movie footage taken at Honeysuckle Creek
during Apollos 11, 16 and 17)
produced in early 2006.
With grateful thanks to – Mark Gray for the NASA Archive video; Ed
von Renouard for the Super 8 footage;
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation
and John Sarkissian for the Australian broadcast footage; Mike Dinn for
the Honeysuckle Creek & Net 2 audio.
See also this side-by-side comparison of the NASA Archive footage and Ed’s Super 8 footage of Armstrong on the ladder (5.7MB MPEG4 file).
See the menu at left for more video.
At the time, the most watched television event in history was Neil Armstrong stepping onto the Moon.
The Australian movie “The Dish”, released in 2000, tells
the story of how the TV from the Moon was received by CSIRO’s 64 metre Parkes
Radio Telescope.
In fact, in the movie, Parkes saves the day because Goldstone’s signal is no good, and Honeysuckle Creek’s antenna isn’t big enough to receive any TV at all.
The movie was a lot of fun, and was ‘based on a true story’. Well, very loosely. Perhaps they should have said ‘inspired by a true story’. (In fact, at least American trailer for the film asserted that it is a true story!)
In retelling the story of the Australian involvement in Apollo 11, it makes Parkes the focus – to the detriment of Goldstone, Honeysuckle and Tidbinbilla. (Honeysuckle’s TV gets a mention in the credits at the end, in one line of text.)
While ‘The Dish’ was just a movie (and an enjoyable one at that!), all who watched it will have been left with the impression that Parkes was the sole source of TV from the Moon.
That is not correct.
In fact the video of Neil
Armstrong’s first step actually came to the world through Honeysuckle
Creek!
 |
 |
Parkes Radio Telescope. Photo: Keith Aldworth. |
Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station. Photo: Hamish Lindsay. |
With its larger antenna, Parkes was able to provide the best TV pictures – when it came on line several minutes after Neil’s first step.
All who worked at Honeysuckle, Tidbinbilla and at Parkes did so as part of a larger team. There was no ‘competition’ to be first – either then or now.
However, it is important to explain what actually happened – not to diminish the excellent work done by John Bolton and his team at Parkes – but simply to get history right.
And it’s important
to be fair to those who actually provided those breathtaking television images
to the world.
In this section,
then is an account of what happened on Monday 21st July, 1969 – as well as other information on how live TV from the Moon came to the people of Earth for the very first time –