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A Tribute to the men and women of
Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station, Canberra, Australia

the wider Australian involvement
in manned and unmanned space exploration, and more!

Updated 02 February 2026. | News & Events 03 December 2025.

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Featured for February 2026

Some of the ladies at Tidbinbilla, standing at the DSS43 Ops Console, in May 1975.

L-R: Ina Graham, Barbara Stratford, Pat Ashford, Lyn Cowley, Helena Tuohino. Photo: Hamish Lindsay.

Image from the 2026 Honeysuckle and NASA Networks (completely unofficial) Calendar on my personal website.


Anniversaries:


Remembering Friendship 7, 20-21 February 1962 Just before midnight West Australian time on 20 February 1962, Commtech Gerry O’Connor (centre) at Muchea became the first Australian to hail a space traveller when he established communications with Astronaut John Glenn on his first orbit, and then passed the circuit to Capcom Gordon Cooper (right). Among those involved at Muchea in tracking John Glenn were – Lewis Wainwright – Station Director Ken Lee and Don Blackman – VERLORT Radar Jack Duperouzel – Acquisition Team Kevyn Westbrook – Ground Communications Controller. And among those reporting the news from Muchea were – John Penlington – ABC Radio Darcy Farrell – TVW Channel 7, Perth. Friendship 7 was also tracked at Woomera (Red Lake), where this wonderful recording of Network communications was made. Recommended: The 1962 NASA documentary Friendship 7.

Remembering Apollo 14 : 01 – 10 February (Aust. dates) 1971.


Honeysuckle people:

Honeysuckle’s Mike Evenett shares his story.


Stories:

NASA Flight Controller Manfred “Dutch” von Ehrenfried recalls his visit to Carnarvon in 1964.


Remembering:

Don Blackman, Muchea, Carnarvon, Cooby Creek – in the Space People section.

Darcy Farrell, TVW6, Perth – in the Space People section.

Eugene Duret, Muchea Capcom for MA-8 – in the Space People section.

Eric Hird, Island Lagoon, JPL– in the Space People section.

Honeysuckle Humour:

The Honeysuckle Alphabet.

See the full collection of featured items at this link.

Also see some related (and some unrelated!) video at vimeo.com/honeysuckle.

Some of them are collected here.

Site Menu

Updates | News| Previously featured items

Honeysuckle Creek

Intro
Early Days (Location, Construction, Early scenes, Opening)
The Station (Technical descriptions, photos)
Honeysuckle People, Stories. (incl. Visitors, StaDirs, Reunions, and more.)

Apollo Missions

The Manned Space Flight Network,
Mission Control Center - Houston,
MSFN Technical Information Bulletins

Preparing for Apollo, Goddard Sims, Station Readiness Tests,

Apollo Summary,

Apollo 1, Apollo 7, Apollo 8, Apollo 9, Apollo 10, Apollo 11, Apollo 11 TV, Apollo 12, Apollo 13, Apollo 14, Apollo 15, Apollo 16, Apollo 17, ALSEP, Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

Leaving the MSFN.

Deep Space Missions

Last Days Honeysuckle Today The Books

Videos

Interviews

Space People

Other

Other Stations
Tidbinbilla, Goldstone, Madrid, Carnarvon, Guam, Ascension Island, ARIA, Deakin Switch, Parkes, Muchea, Red Lake, Island Lagoon, Orroral Valley, Cooby Creek, Carnarvon OTC, OTC (Aust), BFEC, Santiago, Darwin, Texas (Corpus Christi), MILA.

Missions Supported by Other Stations
Mercury: Friendship 7, Faith 7.
Gemini: Gemini 3, Gemini 4, Gemini 5, Gemini 12.
Mariner IV, Ranger, Lunar Orbiter, Surveyor, Pioneer, Viking, Voyager.

Department of Supply
Pioneers, WRESAT, Woomera.

About / Contact
Tips on navigating the site
Links

A message from Christopher Kraft, 14 March 1974, on the occasion of Honeysuckle leaving the Manned Space Flight Network.

Honeysuckle Creek
The story of Tom Reid, a little dish, and Neil Armstrong’s First Step – by Andrew Tink, 2019.

Click for more about the book.

In 2019, the Royal Australian Mint Moon Landing Coins commemorated the Moon landing.

Click for more about the coins.


Honeysuckle Creek: a beautiful setting Website by Colin Mackellar – photo taken 09 October 1971.	Honeysuckle and Apollo 11 The Apollo 11 Mission. Apollo 11 TV. Search for the tapes.


Australian Prime Minister John Gorton visits Honeysuckle Creek on the day of the Moon Landing, Monday 21 July 1969. Silent film runs for 4'02" – a 14MB MPEG4 file.	The Prime Minister after his tour inside Honeysuckle’s Operations building. Unedited news film runs for 5'14" – a 21MB MPEG4 file.
Both clips courtesy of the ABC. See more of the Prime Minister’s visit here.

The Honeysuckle antenna today

The old Honeysuckle antenna was used for its last official track in January 2010.

DSS46 photos.

And here’s a tribute page of photos on the occasion of the shutdown.

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