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 64m 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, sort of. 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 at the end, in one line of text.)
While ‘The Dish’ was just a movie (and a really 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.
 |
|
Honeysuckle
Creek
|
That is not correct.
In fact the video of Neil Armstrong’s first step actually came to the world through Honeysuckle Creek!
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.
Here,
then is an account of what happened on Monday 21st July, 1969 –